Holistic protection of cloud-based serverless applications

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12197293-B2
Application number	US-202318487180-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 16, 2023
Priority date	Apr 30, 2019
Publication date	Jan 14, 2025
Grant date	Jan 14, 2025

Abstract

The present inventors devised a holistic approach for protecting serverless applications in single-cloud, multi-zone, multi-cloud, and/or non-cloud data center computing environments. An illustrative data storage management system discovers application assets, relationships, and interoperability dependencies and creates an “application entity” that references the various assets. Protection preferences apply to the application entity as a whole. An orchestration function in the system coordinates storage management operations (e.g., backup, replication, live synchronization, etc.) in a suitable order of operations gleaned from asset dependencies, if any. A set of copies of the application's discovered assets are generated in coordinated fashion and represent a point-in-time copy of the application. The point-in-time copy can be restored and/or migrated to other computing services by the data storage management system. The orchestration function coordinates restore and migration operations, including any cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to/from-non-cloud conversions that might be necessary to activate the application in a different computing environment.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising one or more hardware computing devices programmed with computer-executable instructions that cause the system to:
define, within the system, an application-entity that comprises a list of assets that are associated with an application that operates in a cloud computing environment,
wherein the assets include a first asset and a second asset that are accessed by the application and that are deployed in the cloud computing environment;
define, within the system, one or more preferences for protecting the application-entity;
at a first time frame, generate, according to the one or more preferences, a point-in-time copy of the application, comprising:
by a first component of the system that is configured to protect the first asset, transmit data of the first asset to a second component of the system, wherein the second component is configured to generate a first copy of the first asset based on the data of the first asset received from the first component,
by a third component of the system that is different from the first component and that is configured to protect the second asset, transmit data of the second asset to one of: the second component and a fourth component of the system,
wherein the one of: the second component and the fourth component, is configured to generate a first copy of the second asset based on the data of the second asset received from the third component,
cause the point-in-time copy to be stored in persistent storage, wherein the point-in-time copy comprises an association among the application-entity and the first time frame, and further comprises the first copy of the first asset and the first copy of the second asset.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the system to: determine one or more dependencies among the assets that are associated with the application, wherein the first copy of the first asset and the first copy of the second asset are generated according to an order of operations that is based on the one or more dependencies.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the system to: generate an asset mapping for the application-entity, wherein the asset mapping comprises the one or more dependencies, and wherein the system generates the point-in-time copy based on the asset mapping.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the persistent storage is configured outside the cloud computing environment.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the persistent storage is configured in one or more data storage resources of the cloud computing environment.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the system to: perform a storage management operation that restores the point-in-time copy of the application to the cloud computing environment; and
cause the application to access data of the first asset restored from the first copy of the first asset and to access data of the second asset restored from the first copy of the second asset.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the system to: determine that the first asset is also associated with a second application, wherein a second application-entity is defined in the system to correspond to the second application;
perform a second storage management operation that generates a point-in-time copy of the second application, wherein the point-in-time copy of the second application comprises an association among the second application-entity and a time frame of the second storage management operation, and further comprises a second copy of the first asset, distinct from the first copy of the first asset, and a copy of another asset of the second application.

8. The system of claim 7 , wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the system to: cause the point-in-time copy of the second application to be stored in persistent storage, wherein the point-in-time copy of the second application is distinct from the point-in-time copy of the application.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first component of the system comprises a first type of data agent that executes on a computing device, and wherein the third component of the system comprises a second type of data agent that executes on a computing device; and
wherein the second component of the system comprises a media agent that executes on a computing device that is communicatively coupled to the persistent storage.

10. The system of claim 1 , further comprising: a storage manager that executes on a computing device, wherein the storage manager is configured to: store a definition of the application-entity in a management database associated with the storage manager, store the one or more preferences in the management database, and orchestrate generating of the point-in-time copy.

11. A computer-implemented method performed by one or more hardware computing devices programmed with computer-executable instructions, the method comprising:
defining, within a data storage management system, an application-entity that comprises a list of assets that are associated with an application,
wherein the assets include a first asset that is accessed by the application and is deployed in a first cloud computing environment, and
further include a second asset that is accessed by the application and is deployed in a second cloud computing environment; and
at a first time frame, generating a point-in-time copy of the application, comprising:
by a first component of the data storage management system that is configured to protect the first asset, transmitting data of the first asset to a second component of the data storage management system, wherein the second component is configured to generate a first copy of the first asset based on the data of the first asset received from the first component,
by a third component of the data storage management system that is different from the first component and that is configured to protect the second asset, transmitting data of the second asset to one of: the second component and a fourth component of the data storage management system,
wherein the one of: the second component and the fourth component, is configured to generate a first copy of the second asset based on the data of the second asset received from the third component, and
causing the point-in-time copy to be stored in persistent storage, wherein the point-in-time copy comprises an association among the application-entity and the first time frame, and further comprises the first copy of the first asset and the first copy of the second asset.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , further comprising: determining one or more dependencies among the assets that are associated with the application, wherein the first copy of the first asset and the first copy of the second asset are generated according to an order of operations that is based on the one or more dependencies.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 , further comprising: generating an asset mapping for the application-entity, wherein the asset mapping comprises the one or more dependencies, and wherein generating the point-in-time copy of the application is based on the asset mapping.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , wherein the persistent storage is configured outside the first cloud computing environment and outside the second cloud computing environment.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , further comprising:
defining, within the data storage management system,

Assignees

• Commvault Systems Inc

Inventors

• Bansod Ketan
• Ahn Jun H
• Ramohalli Gopala Rao Girish

Classifications

• H04L67/51

  Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services · CPC title

• G06F11/203 Primary

  using migration · CPC title

• G06F11/1451

  by selection of backup contents · CPC title

• H04L67/34

  involving the movement of software or configuration parameters  (network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416) · CPC title

• H04L67/1097

  for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS] · CPC title