Virtual Machine Backup Restoration with User Checkpoint Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current virtual machine backup methodologies ignore user checkpoints, leading to incomplete restoration of virtual machine states during recovery, as they only account for system-instantiated restoration points.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves maintaining and accounting for both user and system checkpoints during virtual machine restoration, ensuring that user checkpoints are preserved and integrated into the restoration process, allowing for comprehensive state recovery by updating the disk chain path and metadata to include user checkpoints alongside system checkpoints.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If current virtual machine backup methodologies are used, then system-instantiated restoration points are accounted for, but user checkpoints are ignored leading to incomplete restoration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the checkpoint tracking mechanism into two distinct components: system checkpoints and user checkpoints. By creating separate tracking structures for each type, the system can independently manage and restore both system-instantiated restoration points and user-defined checkpoints, ensuring neither is lost during the backup and restoration process
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a universal checkpoint tracking mechanism that handles both system checkpoints and user checkpoints through a unified data structure. This multi-functional approach allows the same backup infrastructure to preserve multiple types of restoration points simultaneously, eliminating the need for separate backup processes for different checkpoint types
2Reliability
If user checkpoints are included in the restoration process, then complete state recovery is achieved, but the complexity of managing disk chain paths increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary checkpoint metadata structure that mediates between the complex disk chain paths and the restoration process. This metadata layer abstracts the complexity of tracking multiple disk chains (system and user checkpoints) while providing a simplified interface for restoration operations, managing the increased complexity without exposing it to the user
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a copied and simplified representation of the checkpoint hierarchy through metadata structures. Instead of directly managing the complex physical disk chain paths, the system maintains copied metadata that represents the checkpoint relationships, making it easier to track and restore both system and user checkpoints without dealing with the full complexity of the underlying storage structure
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for efficiently restoring synthetic full backup based virtual machines that include user checkpoints. Specifically, the method and system disclosed herein overcome a behavioral limitation exhibited in present virtual machine backup methodologies, where said methodologies ignore the presence of user checkpoints storing state for a virtual machine. In accounting for the user checkpoints while recovering a virtual machine, embodiments of the invention maintain restoration points for virtual machine state instantiated by the user, in addition to those instantiated by the system.