On the fly pit selection in cloud disaster recovery

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11880286-B2
Application number	US-202218064374-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 12, 2022
Priority date	Jun 24, 2020
Publication date	Jan 23, 2024
Grant date	Jan 23, 2024

Abstract

On-the-fly point-in-time recovery operations are disclosed. During a recovery operation, the PiT being restored can be changed on-the-fly or during the existing recovery operation without restarting the recovery process from the beginning. In one example, this improves recovery time operation (RTO) and prevents aspects of the recovery operation to be avoided when changing to a different PiT.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
identifying a point-in-time (PiT) to recover from a plurality of PiTs;
recovering the PiT as a converted virtual machine, wherein the converted virtual machines includes a data volume corresponding to a timestamp of the PiT;
starting a change block driver with an operating system, wherein the change block tracker is configured to track changes to the data volume;
operating the converted virtual machine as a restored virtual machine and running an application on the restored virtual machine, wherein the change block driver tracks changes to the data volume; and
returning the data volume to the timestamp using the changes tracked by the change block driver;
moving the data volume to a second PiT included in the plurality of PiTs without requiring a second conversion of a second representation of the virtual machine.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising returning the data volume to the timestamp when the restored virtual machine is not validated.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the restored virtual machine is not validated when a data disk contains an incorrect version of data.

4. The method of claim 1 , further moving the data volume to the second PiT without restarting a restore operation.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein moving the data volume to the second PiT is performed on-the-fly.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising attaching an operating system (OS) disk to the converted virtual machine, wherein the OS disk is separate from a data disk.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising moving the data volume to the second PiT without interrupting operation of the OS disk.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein moving the data volume to the second PiT comprises:
detaching the data volume from the restored virtual machine;
when the second PiT is earlier in time, identifying segments that were changed and applying data written before the second PiT; and
when the second PiT is later in time, applying segments to the data volume that have changed up to the second PiT.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising attaching the data volume to a service virtual machine and reviewing segments for PiTs between the first PiT and the second PiT.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising
stopping the application without stopping operation of the operating system;
restoring the data volume by reverting the changes to the data volume identified in a bitmap created by the change block driver such that the data volume corresponds to the data volume at the timestamp; and
detaching the data volume from the restored virtual machine.

11. A non-transitory storage medium having stored therein instructions that are executable by one or more hardware processors to perform operations comprising:
identifying a point-in-time (PiT) to recover from a plurality of PiTs;
recovering the PiT as a converted virtual machine, wherein the converted virtual machines includes a data volume corresponding to a timestamp of the PiT;
starting a change block driver with an operating system, wherein the change block tracker is configured to track changes to the data volume;
operating the converted virtual machine as a restored virtual machine and running an application on the restored virtual machine, wherein the change block driver tracks changes to the data volume; and
returning the data volume to the timestamp using the changes tracked by the change block driver;
moving the data volume to a second PiT included in the plurality of PiTs without requiring a second conversion of a second representation of the virtual machine.

12. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11 , further comprising returning the data volume to the timestamp when the restored virtual machine is not validated.

13. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 12 , wherein the restored virtual machine is not validated when a data disk contains an incorrect version of data.

14. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11 , further moving the data volume to the second PiT without restarting a restore operation.

15. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 14 , wherein moving the data volume to the second PiT is performed on-the-fly.

16. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11 , further comprising attaching an operating system (OS) disk to the converted virtual machine, wherein the OS disk is separate from a data disk.

17. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 16 , further comprising moving the data volume to the second PiT without interrupting operation of the OS disk.

18. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11 , wherein moving the data volume to the second PiT comprises:
detaching the data volume from the restored virtual machine;
when the second PiT is earlier in time, identifying segments that were changed and applying data written before the second PiT; and
when the second PiT is later in time, applying segments to the data volume that have changed up to the second PiT.

19. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 18 , further comprising attaching the data volume to a service virtual machine and reviewing segments for PiTs between the first PiT and the second PiT.

20. The non-transitory storage medium of claim 11 , further comprising
stopping the application without stopping operation of the operating system;
restoring the data volume by reverting the changes to the data volume identified in a bitmap created by the change block driver such that the data volume corresponds to the data volume at the timestamp; and
detaching the data volume from the restored virtual machine.

Assignees

• Emc Ip Holding Co Llc

Inventors

• Shemer Jehuda
• Wolfson Kfir
• Kushnir Tomer
• Said Jawad

Classifications

• G06F11/1469 Primary

  Backup restoration techniques · CPC title

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• G06F11/1451

  by selection of backup contents · CPC title

• G06F11/1484

  involving virtual machines · CPC title

• G06F2009/45575

  Starting, stopping, suspending or resuming virtual machine instances · CPC title