Synthetic Backup Generation with Endianness Conversion
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing backup systems face difficulties in managing large amounts of data due to increasing incremental backups, which can lead to performance issues and limitations in system resources, and are complicated by differences in data storage formats such as big and little endian, affecting the versatility and restoration of backups across various computing environments.
Innovation Solution
The system generates synthetic backups by merging related backups in a stream context, converting data formats as needed to ensure endianness independence, allowing for the creation of full synthetic backups that are platform- and operating system-independent, and can be stored in virtual formats like VHDx for portability and restoration across different environments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If incremental backups are continuously generated to protect large amounts of data, then data protection coverage is improved, but backup management complexity increases and system performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple incremental backups with a full backup to create a synthetic full backup. This consolidation process combines the benefits of incremental backups (reduced storage requirements) while simplifying management by creating a single restoreable unit that represents the complete data state at a point in time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by proactively creating synthetic full backups from existing incremental backups before they are needed for restoration. This advance preparation reduces management complexity by having ready-to-restore synthetic backups available, eliminating the need to manage long chains of incremental backups.
2Reliability
If multiple incremental backups are generated over time, then data protection is improved, but backup restoration complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges incremental backups with the base full backup to create a synthetic full backup that contains all necessary data in a single restoreable unit. This eliminates the complexity of applying multiple incremental backups in sequence, as the synthetic backup can be restored independently in a single operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a synthetic copy of the full backup by combining data from incremental backups. This synthetic copy serves as a standalone restoration artifact that simplifies the restoration process, as it can be restored without needing to access or apply the original chain of incremental backups.
3Device complexity
If synthetic backups are generated to reduce backup numbers, then backup management is simplified, but endianness compatibility issues arise
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements endianness conversion to make synthetic backups universal and compatible with different system architectures. By converting data to a standard endianness format during the synthetic backup creation process, the backup becomes adaptable to both big-endian and little-endian systems, ensuring versatility across different computing environments.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the endianness parameter of the backup data during synthetic backup generation. This parameter transformation ensures that the synthetic backup maintains compatibility across different system architectures, resolving the adaptability issue while preserving the management simplicity benefits.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for generating synthetic backups and for consolidating a chain of related backups. The chain of related backups is merged on the fly to create a backup stream. A block allocation table (BAT) may be identified for each backup to be consolidated into a synthetic backup, and BAT entries from each backup may be merged or combined to create a new BAT table associated with the synthetic backup. The data included in the related backups may be reformatted on the fly from big endian to little endian or vice versa. The backup stream is stored on a target device or volume.