Systems and methods for performing data management operations using snapshots

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9268602-B2
Application number	US-201314083089-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 18, 2013
Priority date	Sep 14, 2009
Publication date	Feb 23, 2016
Grant date	Feb 23, 2016

Abstract

A system stores a snapshot and an associated data structure or index to storage media to create a secondary copy of a volume of data. In some cases, the associated index includes application specific data about a file system or other application that created the data to identify the location of the data. The associated index may include three entries, and may be used to facilitate the recovery of data via the snapshot. The snapshot may be used by ancillary applications to perform various functions, such as content indexing, data classification, deduplication, e-discovery, and other functions.

First claim

I/We claim:

1. A method for creating snapshots of virtual machines, wherein the method is performed by a computing system having a processor and memory, the method comprising:
receiving an indication of a discovery of one or more virtual machines are hosted by a primary virtual machine host,
creating snapshots of the one or more virtual machines hosted by the primary virtual machine host, wherein the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines reference multiple data objects;
creating at least one index associated with the snapshots, wherein the index includes context information related to logical locations of copies of the multiple data objects referenced by each of the snapshots;
exposing the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines to at least one second virtual machine host;
registering the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host via the exposed snapshots;
powering on the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host;
verifying that the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines were properly created based on the powering on of the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host; and
in response to verifying that the snapshots were properly created, powering off the one or more virtual machines on the at least one secondary virtual machine host.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the method further comprises accessing one or more of the multiple individual data objects.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the snapshots references at least one set of data associated with an application, and wherein the application includes an email server, a Structured Query Language (SQL) server, a file server, or an application server.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein creating snapshots includes creating the snapshots at least partly with a hardware-based snapshot provider.

5. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium whose contents cause a computing system to create snapshots of virtual machines, wherein the computing system has a processor and memory, comprising:
receiving an indication of a discovery of one or more virtual machines are hosted by a primary virtual machine host,
creating snapshots of the one or more virtual machines hosted by the primary virtual machine host, wherein the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines reference multiple data objects;
creating at least one index associated with the snapshots, wherein the index includes context information related to logical locations of copies of the multiple data objects referenced by each of the snapshots;
exposing the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines to at least one second virtual machine host;
registering the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host via the exposed snapshots;
powering on the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host;
verifying that the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines were properly created based on the powering on of the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host; and
in response to verifying that the snapshots were properly created, powering off the one or more virtual machines on the at least one secondary virtual machine host.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 , further comprising accessing one or more of the multiple individual data objects.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 wherein the snapshots references at least one set of data associated with an application, and wherein the application includes an email server, a Structured Query Language (SQL) server, a file server, or an application server.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 wherein creating snapshots includes creating the snapshots at least partly with a hardware-based snapshot provider.

9. A system to create snapshots of virtual machines, comprising:
at least one processor;
at least one memory;
a receiving component configured to receive an indication of one or more virtual machines,
a creating component configured to create snapshots of the one or more virtual machines hosted by a primary virtual machine host, wherein the snapshots reference multiple data objects, and configured to create at least one index associated with the snapshots, wherein the index includes context information related to logical locations of copies of the multiple data objects referenced by each of the snapshots;
an exposing component configured to expose the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines to the at least one second virtual machine host;
a registering component configured to register the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host; and
a powering component configured to power on the or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host, wherein powering on of the one or more virtual machines on the at least one second virtual machine host verifies that the snapshots of the one or more virtual machines were properly created, and configured to power off the one or more virtual machines on the at least one secondary virtual machine host after the verification that the snapshots were properly created.

10. The system of claim 9 , further comprising an accessing component configured to access one or more of the multiple individual data objects.

11. The system of claim 9 wherein the snapshots reference at least one set of data associated with an application, and wherein the application includes an email server, a Structured Query Language (SQL) server, a file server, or an application server.

12. The system of claim 9 wherein the creating component is associated with a hardware-based snapshot provider.

Assignees

• Commvault Systems Inc

Inventors

• Prahlad Anand
• Pawar Rahul S

Classifications

• G06F17/30088

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30091

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F9/4856 Primary

  resumption being on a different machine, e.g. task migration, virtual machine migration (G06F9/5088 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F16/13 Primary

  File access structures, e.g. distributed indices (arrangements of input from, or output to, record carriers G06F3/06) · CPC title

• G06F16/128

  Details of file system snapshots on the file-level, e.g. snapshot creation, administration, deletion (error detection or correction of the data by redundancy in operations or in hardware G06F11/14, G06F11/16) · CPC title