Snapshot Management for Backup Storage Optimization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current backup systems for computer networks face inefficiencies in data transfer and storage, particularly in high-speed environments, where full backups are time-consuming, and snapshot implementations can lead to disk space issues due to overlapping snapshots, and lack of efficient disaster recovery solutions for mid-market companies.
Innovation Solution
A method that involves choosing a time window for backup, determining necessary jobs and snapshots, selecting an optimal set of snapshots, altering job records to point to these snapshots, and deleting unnecessary snapshots to optimize disk space, while utilizing cloud storage with WebDAV for rapid communication, data deduplication, and encryption for security, enabling efficient backup and recovery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If incremental backups are used to reduce backup time, then backup speed improves, but disk space consumption increases due to multiple overlapping snapshots
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically identifies and deletes redundant snapshots that are no longer needed for backup recovery, while preserving necessary snapshots. This pruning process removes duplicate data copies, freeing up disk space while maintaining backup integrity and recovery capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the state of snapshot data from redundant copies to optimized references by altering how snapshot relationships are stored and managed. This transforms the storage structure to reduce space consumption while maintaining the ability to recover data from any point in time.
2Quantity of substance
If pointer-based snapshots are used to reduce disk capacity consumption, then storage efficiency improves, but access speed decreases due to complex pointer resolution
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-processes and optimizes snapshot relationships before they are needed for recovery. By提前 organizing snapshot pointers and resolving dependencies in advance, the system minimizes the computational overhead during actual data access and recovery operations, thus improving access speed without sacrificing storage efficiency.
3Quantity of substance
If automated snapshot management is implemented to optimize storage, then storage efficiency improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service automation where the backup software automatically manages snapshot creation, identification, and deletion without requiring manual administrator intervention. The system autonomously monitors disk space usage, identifies redundant snapshots, and performs cleanup operations, thereby maintaining storage efficiency while minimizing the operational complexity for users.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are disclosed for backing up a computer. The method includes choosing a time window to back up the computer; determining jobs that need to be synced during the time window and snapshots; determining an optimal set of snapshots that cover all jobs; altering job records in the database to point to one of the optimal snapshots; and deleting all snapshots not in the optimal set.