Monitoring, diagnosing, and repairing a management database in a data storage management system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11474896-B2
Application number	US-202017076005-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 21, 2020
Priority date	Oct 29, 2015
Publication date	Oct 18, 2022
Grant date	Oct 18, 2022

Abstract

A lightweight always-on monitoring, collecting, diagnosing, and correcting utility operates in an enhanced storage manager that manages a data storage managements system. The always-on utility provides a comprehensive and pro-active approach, which is intended to reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the need for after-the-fact diagnostics. The always-on utility also enforces so-called best practices and other heuristics, which include pro-actively activating certain database settings that are not enabled by default; manipulating certain aspects of the database to improve performance; and reporting aspects that are outside best-practice parameters to the trouble report system so that system administrators and/or developers may intervene before a catastrophic failure occurs. In some cases, the best-practice parameters represent heuristics designed by the present inventors to improve the performance and general health of the management database.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
a first computing device comprising one or more hardware processors and computer memory, wherein the first computing device executes a storage manager for managing storage operations in a data storage management system;
wherein the storage manager comprises a database management system comprising a first database storing information about the storage operations;
wherein the storage manager is configured to:
monitor the database management system;
use information extracted from the database management system to diagnose one or more problems of the first database;
initiate one or more corrective actions to be applied to the first database based on the one or more problems of the first database;
transmit information extracted from the database management system to a second computing device comprising one or more hardware processors and computer memory, wherein the second computing device executes a report server comprising a historical database of information about the first database;
transmit notice of at least one of the one or more problems of the first database to a third computing device comprising one or more hardware processors and computer memory, wherein the third computing device executes a trouble report system configured to generate trouble reports based on the at least one of the one or more problems of the first database;
based on receiving information from the database management system indicating data corruption in one or more indexes of the first database, the one or more corrective actions comprise causing the database management system to perform at least one of: (i) re-generate the one or more indexes of the first database, and (ii) re-index all of the first database; and
based on receiving information from the database management system indicating data corruption in the first database other than in the one or more indexes of the first database, the one or more corrective actions comprise causing the database management system to restore the first database from a backup copy.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the second computing device is configured to:
receive from the storage manager, and store in the historical database, information extracted from the database management system that includes one or more of: performance statistics of the first database natively generated by the database management system, temporary data structures of the first database, and logged data of the first database.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the second computing device is further configured to: use the historical database to respond to queries about the first database.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the third computing device is configured to:
receive reporting of a completed remedy based on the one or more corrective actions applied to the first database and store the reporting to a trouble report database at the third computing device.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the third computing device is configured to:
store the trouble reports to a trouble report database at the third computing device.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the third computing device is configured to:
transmit one or more of the trouble reports to a console to enable corrective action to be applied by one or more of: an administrator and a program developer.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first computing device is further configured to cause the database management system to restore the first database from a backup copy after transmitting reports collected from the database management system to the report server at the second computing device.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first computing device is further configured to:
instruct the database management system to re-index a first table in the first database when determining that the first table exceeds a first fragmentation threshold;
instruct the database management system to reorganize the first table when determining that the first table does not exceed the first fragmentation threshold and exceeds a second fragmentation threshold.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first computing device is further configured to:
based on receiving information from the database management system indicating that a first index of the first database is busier compared to other indexes of the first database based on how often the first index is invoked, the one or more corrective actions comprise causing the database management system to move the first index to a second data storage device that is distinct from a first storage device that hosts the first database.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first computing device is further configured to: cause the database management system to instantiate additional temporary-database data structures in the first database to correct a diagnosed problem with responsiveness of the first database.

11. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first computing device is further configured to:
detect that one or more resources of the first database remain locked in query execution longer than a pre-defined threshold, and
identify one or more queries to the first database that cause the one or more resources to remain locked in query execution longer than the pre-defined threshold.

12. The system of claim 1 wherein the first computing device is further configured to:
instruct the database management system to use one or more native utilities of the database management system to perform the re-generate, the re-index, and the restore operations.

13. A system comprising:
a first computing device comprising one or more hardware processors and computer memory, wherein the first computing device executes a storage manager that manages storage operations in a data storage management system;
wherein the storage manager comprises a database management system comprising a first database storing information about the storage operations;
wherein the storage manager is configured to:
use information extracted from the database management system to diagnose a problem of the first database;
initiate one or more remedial actions to be applied to the first database based on the problem of the first database;
transmit information extracted from the database management system to a second computing device comprising one or more hardware processors and computer memory, wherein the second computing device executes a report server and comprises a historical database comprising information about the first database;
transmit notice of the problem of the first database to a third computing device comprising one or more hardware processors and computer memory, wherein the third computing device executes a trouble report system configured to generate trouble reports about the first database;
based on receiving information from the database management system indicating data corruption in one or more indexes of the first database, the one or more remedial actions comprise causing the database management system to perform at least one of: (i) re-generate the one or more indexes of the first database, and (ii) re-index all of the first database; and
based on receiving information from the database management system indicating data corruption in the first database other than in the one or more indexes of the first database, the one or more remedial actions comprise causing the database management system to restore the first database from a backup copy after the first computing device transmits one or more reports collected from the database management system to the report server at the second computing device.

14. The

Assignees

• Commvault Systems Inc

Inventors

• Haridas Ganesh
• NARASIMMAN Sundar
• SURIYANARAYANAN Karthik
• A S Gunassekaran
• Klose Michael Frank

Classifications

• G06F11/3452

  Performance evaluation by statistical analysis · CPC title

• G06F11/0706

  the processing taking place on a specific hardware platform or in a specific software environment · CPC title

• G06F16/2228

  Indexing structures · CPC title

• G06F16/10

  File systems; File servers · CPC title

• G06F2201/80

  Database-specific techniques · CPC title