Storage Tier Manager for Backup Retention Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current cloud backup solutions lack efficient management of data retention periods and lifecycle management, leading to difficulties in controlling data access, security compliance, and jurisdiction-specific data privacy, especially when migrating data between different storage tiers with varying performance capabilities.
Innovation Solution
A storage tier manager is introduced that creates multiple representations of a dataset backup, each with distinct retention periods, allowing for local caching and cloud storage, enabling deduplication, compression, and encryption, while maintaining data isolation and compliance through separate security policies and jurisdiction-specific SLAs/SLPs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If a single cloud backup representation is created, then storage costs are reduced through deduplication, but control over data retention periods and lifecycle management is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The backup system is segmented into multiple representations (cached backup representation and cloud backup representation), each with distinct retention periods and storage locations. This segmentation allows granular control over data lifecycle management while maintaining deduplication efficiency across the entire backup set.
2Loss of energy
If data is migrated to cloud storage, then infrastructure costs are reduced, but data access speed and recovery time increase
Solution Approach 1:
A cached backup representation is maintained as an intermediary between the original data and cloud storage. This intermediate layer provides fast local access for frequently needed data while less frequently accessed data resides in cloud storage, optimizing both access speed and cost efficiency.
3Ease of operation
If multiple representations with different retention periods are created, then lifecycle management control is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates simplified copies of backup metadata and reference information for different retention periods rather than managing complex independent backup systems. The cached and cloud representations reference the same underlying deduplicated data blocks, reducing overall system complexity while enabling granular retention control.
Data Source
AI summary
A storage tier manager efficiently creates different representations of a dataset backup for different retention periods. Each of the representations of the dataset backup is distinctly identifiable despite initially representing a same dataset backup. The representations are structured metadata corresponding to the dataset backup. One representation is a cached backup version of the dataset backup (“cached backup” or “cached representation”) provided for low latency access while residing at a storage tier of the backup appliance for a relatively short retention period according to a lifecycle management policy. The other representation is a cloud backup version of the dataset backup (“cloud backup” or “cloud representation”) provided for persisting into cloud storage for a longer retention period according to the lifecycle management policy.