Protecting a management database of a data storage management system to meet a recovery point objective (RPO)

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11809285-B2
Application number	US-202217668267-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 9, 2022
Priority date	Feb 9, 2022
Publication date	Nov 7, 2023
Grant date	Nov 7, 2023

Abstract

An illustrative data storage management system comprises a management database that stores administrative preferences and system configurations, as well as results and/or statistics of completed secondary storage operations, i.e., information needed by the system to protect customers' data and to track and recover the protected data, including secondary copies such as backup copies, archive copies, etc. The disclosed data storage management system is configured to protect its own system data subject to a very aggressive (short) Recovery Point Objective (RPO), by using an innovative infrastructure that enables the system's storage manager to fail over to any number of other failover destination storage managers, each one comprising a destination management database. An illustrative database granularly tracks whether each and every transaction log file has been successfully applied to each and every destination management database to synchronize with the source management database.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
a first computing device that hosts a storage manager and a first database management system that manages a first database, wherein the first database comprises information about one or more of: storage operations in the system, and preferences associated with storage operations in the system;
a second computing device in communication with first data storage resources; and
wherein the first computing device is configured to:
manage the storage operations in the system,
at a second time after a first time, cause the first database management system to write a first plurality of transaction log files to a data path at the first data storage resources,
wherein the first plurality of transaction log files correspond to changes in the first database that occurred at or after the first time, and
wherein transaction log files, including the first plurality of transaction log files, are written to the first data storage resources at a time frequency that is based on a recovery point objective (RPO) for the first database;

wherein the second computing device is configured to:
at a time frequency that is longer than the RPO, perform a first storage operation that:
(i) transforms a set of transaction log files from a native format, as issued by the first database management system, into backup data chunks in a backup format that is different from the native format, wherein the set of transaction log files includes the first plurality of transaction log files and further includes other transaction log files that were stored at the first data storage resources, based on the RPO, since a preceding first storage operation, and
(ii) stores the backup data chunks at the first data storage resources, and

in a third database maintained by the second computing device at the first data storage resources, track the set of transaction log files relative to each destination computing device among a plurality of destination computing devices,
wherein each destination computing device among the plurality of destination computing devices hosts a storage manager and a second database management system that manages a respective second database, wherein each respective second database is a target for synchronization with the first database, wherein the synchronization comprises restoring the backup data chunks to the respective second database from the first data storage resources, and
track, in the third database, whether, for each transaction log file at the first data storage resources, one or more corresponding backup data chunks have been successfully restored to each respective second database;

wherein a duration of time between the first time and the second time is shorter than performing a backup of the first database; and
wherein each of: the first computing device, the second computing device, and each of the plurality of destination computing devices comprises one or more hardware processors.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising: the plurality of destination computing devices; and
wherein a first destination computing device among the plurality of destination computing devices is configured to: at the time frequency that is longer than the RPO, initiate a second storage operation that restores backup data chunks corresponding to the set of transaction log files to a respective second database of the first destination computing device.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein a first destination computing device among the plurality of destination computing devices is configured to:
after successfully restoring, by the second storage operation, one or more backup data chunks that correspond to a given transaction log file to the respective second database of the first destination computing device,
cause the third database to indicate that the given transaction log file has been synchronized to one or more of: the first destination computing device, and the respective second database of the first destination computing device.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein the first destination computing device among the plurality of destination computing devices is further configured to:
execute a data agent that is in communication with a second database management system, at the first destination computing device, that manages the respective second database of the first destination computing device, and
wherein the data agent is configured to, as part of the second storage operation, transmit each restored backup data chunk to the second database management system with instructions to apply the restored backup data chunk to the respective second database.

5. The system of claim 2 , wherein the second computing device is further configured to: execute a media agent that:
transforms the set of transaction log files from the native format to backup data chunks in the backup format,
maintains the third database, and
performs the second storage operation, in conjunction with a data agent that executes at the first destination computing device, to restore the backup data chunks.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein the data agent is in communication with a second database management system that manages the respective second database of the first destination computing device, and
wherein the data agent is configured to, as part of the second storage operation, transmit each restored backup data chunk to the second database management system with instructions to apply the restored backup data chunk to the respective second database.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the duration of time between the first time and the second time is based on the RPO of the first database, and wherein the RPO is configured as a preference for the system.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein whether or not the RPO is met is based on when the first plurality of transaction log files are stored at the first data storage resources relative to the first time.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein a first data agent, which is hosted by the first computing device and is associated with the first database management system, is configured to cause the first database management system to write the first plurality of transaction log files to the data path at the first data storage resources.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein a first data agent, which is hosted by the first computing device and is associated with the first database management system, is configured to cause the first database management system to write the first plurality of transaction log files to the data path at the first data storage resources via a media agent that is hosted by the second computing device.

11. A computer-implemented method comprising:
by a first computing device that hosts a storage manager and a first database management system that manages a first database, wherein the first database comprises information about one or more of: storage operations in a first data storage management system, and preferences associated with storage operations in the first data storage management system:
managing the storage operations in the first data storage management system,
at a second time after a first time, causing the first database management system to store a first plurality of transaction log files to a data path at first data storage resources associated with a second computing device, and
wherein the first plurality of transaction log files correspond to changes in the first database that occurred at or after the first time,
wherein transaction log files, including the first plurality of transaction log files, are stored into the first data storage resources at a time frequency that is based on a recovery poi

Assignees

• Commvault Systems Inc

Inventors

• Bhagi Sri Karthik
• Sabjan Check Abdoul Cader
• Ahn Jun H

Classifications

• G06F11/1469 Primary

  Backup restoration techniques · CPC title

• G06F11/1474

  in transactions (updating of structured data in databases G06F16/23) · CPC title

• G06F2201/87

  Monitoring of transactions · CPC title

• G06F2201/80

  Database-specific techniques · CPC title

• G06F11/1471

  involving logging of persistent data for recovery · CPC title