Shared Online Storage Pool for Data Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Businesses face challenges in efficiently protecting and managing growing volumes of data, including insufficient storage capacity and the need for user-friendly data protection solutions that leverage data for analysis and access, while minimizing impact on productivity and cost.
Innovation Solution
A centralized storage manager administers a shared, online storage pool where members contribute local resources, allowing for efficient data backup and recovery through a peer-to-peer connection, utilizing a share list for data distribution and encryption for security, enabling flexible and secure data management across geographically diverse storage resources.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If users purchase or access sufficient storage capacity locally, then data protection needs are met, but storage capacity cannot be efficiently utilized and users must maintain large amounts of storage devices
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple users' storage resources are merged into a shared pool that can be dynamically allocated. Individual user storage devices are combined to form a collective resource pool, allowing efficient utilization while meeting data protection needs.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared storage pool serves multiple functions: data backup, disaster recovery, and efficient resource allocation. The same storage infrastructure supports both data protection and optimized resource utilization across multiple users.
2Productivity
If storage resources are centralized, then storage operations can be optimized, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
A storage manager acts as an intermediary between users and the shared storage pool, handling allocation, monitoring, and optimization tasks. This mediator simplifies the interface for users while enabling complex optimized operations in the background.
3Reliability
If secondary copies are stored remotely in other members' storage, then disaster recovery capability is improved, but data distribution complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Members of the storage pool automatically contribute their storage resources and participate in the distributed storage system. The system self-organizes data distribution across members based on available capacity, reducing manual configuration complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A data storage system according to certain aspects manages and administers the sharing of storage resources among clients in the shared storage pool. The shared storage pool according to certain aspects can provide readily available remote storage to clients in the pool. A share list for each client may be used to determine where data is stored within the storage pool. The share list may include clients that are known to each client, and therefore, a user may feel more at ease storing the data on the clients in the storage pool. Management and administration of the storage pool and backup and restore jobs can be performed by an entity other than the client, making backup and restore more streamlined and simple for the clients in the pool.