Making more active use of a secondary storage system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9921769-B2
Application number	US-201414309869-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 19, 2014
Priority date	Jun 19, 2014
Publication date	Mar 20, 2018
Grant date	Mar 20, 2018

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed which allow a secondary storage system to provide data to non-production workloads in conjunction with performing data backup and protection tasks. As disclosed, a secondary storage system exposes backup data stored by the secondary storage system to other workloads, such as test and development applications, data analytics, etc. These non-production workloads can run at the same time the secondary storage system provides backup services to a primary storage system. This consolidation eliminates the need for an enterprise to deploy separate storage clusters for analytics, test and development applications, etc. and eliminates unnecessary copies of data.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for providing access to data stored in a secondary storage system, the method comprising:
receiving data from a primary storage system to store in the secondary storage system, wherein the received data provides a backup of data stored by the primary storage system;
generating at least a first view of the received data in the secondary storage system, wherein the first view includes a root node, one or more intermediate nodes, and one or more leaf nodes;
generating, from the first view, at least a second view of the received data in the secondary storage system, wherein the first view and the second view each have an associated tree data structure having a plurality of nodes, wherein a plurality of leaf nodes of the tree data structures each include a key-value pair indicating a location of data in the secondary storage system exposed by the views, wherein the second view exposes the received data to a client system according to at least a first protocol and a second protocol, and wherein generating the second view comprises copying the root node of the tree data structure associated with the first view, wherein the copied root node includes one or more corresponding pointers to the one or more intermediate nodes of the first view;
upon modification of data exposed by the second view, generating a new leaf node in the tree data structure associated with the second view, wherein the copied root node associated with the second view includes a pointer that directly or indirectly references the new leaf node, and the new leaf node stores metadata indicating a location of the modified data, and wherein the new leaf node that stores the modified data is not exposed by the first view;
in response to receiving a read request from the client system for data exposed by the second view, traversing the tree data structure associated with the second view from the copied root node to one or more of the leaf nodes in the tree data structure associated with the second view to identify a leaf node storing metadata identifying a location of the requested data;
upon determining the location of the requested data is stored in the new leaf node in the tree data structure associated with the second view, retrieving the requested data from the second view;
upon determining the location of the requested data is stored in a leaf node in the tree data structure associated with the first view, retrieving the requested data from the first view; and
returning the requested data.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, in response to receiving a request from the client system to perform a write operation to an element of the received data exposed by the second view, performing the write operation to the requested element of data accessed via the second view without modifying a corresponding element of the received data accessed via the first view.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second view corresponds to a state of data in the primary storage system at a given point in time, as captured by a backup stored by the secondary storage system.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the client system comprises either a test and development system or a data analytics system.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first protocol and the second protocol is one of a server message block (SMB) protocol, a network file system (NFS) protocol, an Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol, a representational state transfer (REST) protocol, and a Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) protocol.

6. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions, which when executed on a processor, perform an operation for providing access to data stored in a secondary storage system, the method comprising:
receiving data from a primary storage system to store in the secondary storage system, wherein the received data provides a backup of data stored by the primary storage system;
generating at least a first view of the received data in the secondary storage system, wherein the first view includes a root node, one or more intermediate nodes, and one or more leaf nodes;
generating, from the first view, at least a second view of the received data in the secondary storage system, wherein the first view and the second view each have an associated tree data structure having a plurality of nodes, wherein a plurality of leaf nodes of the tree data structures each include a key-value pair indicating a location of data in the secondary storage system exposed by the views, wherein the second view exposes the received data to a client system according to at least a first protocol and a second protocol, and wherein generating the second view comprises copying the root node of the tree data structure associated with the first view, wherein the copied root node includes one or more corresponding pointers to the one or more intermediate nodes of the first view;
upon modification of data exposed by the second view, generating a new leaf node in the tree data structure associated with the second view, wherein the copied root node associated with the second view includes a pointer that directly or indirectly references the new leaf node, and the new leaf node stores metadata indicating a location of the modified data, and wherein the new leaf node that stores the modified data is not exposed by the first view;
in response to receiving a read request from the client system for data exposed by the second view, traversing tree data structure associated with the second view from the copied a root node to one or more of the leaf nodes in the tree data structure associated with the second view to identify a leaf node storing metadata identifying a location of the requested data;
upon determining the location of the requested data is stored in the new leaf node in the tree data structure associated with the second view, retrieving the requested data from the second view;
upon determining the location of the requested data is stored in a leaf node in the tree data structure associated with the first view, retrieving the requested data from the first view; and
returning the requested data.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 6 , wherein the operation further comprises, in response to receiving a request from the client system to perform a write operation to an element of the received data exposed by the second view, performing the write operation to the requested element of data accessed via the second view without modifying a corresponding element of the received data accessed via the first view.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 6 , wherein the second view corresponds to a state of data in the primary storage system at a given point in time, as captured by a backup stored by the secondary the secondary storage system.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 6 , wherein the client system comprises either a test and development system or a data analytics system.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the first protocol and the second protocol is one of a server message block (SMB) protocol, a network file system (NFS) protocol, an Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol, a representational state transfer (REST) protocol, and a Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) protocol.

11. A secondary storage system, comprising:
one or more computing nodes, wherein each node has at least one computer processor, a memory, and one or more local storage devices and wherein each node hosts an instance of one or more applications providing access to data stored in the storage devices by performin

Assignees

• Cohesity Inc

Inventors

• Aron Mohit
• Reddy Vinay

Classifications

• G06F11/1448

  Management of the data involved in backup or backup restore · CPC title

• G06F3/0626 Primary

  Reducing size or complexity of storage systems · CPC title

• G06F11/1456

  Hardware arrangements for backup · CPC title

• G06F3/065 Primary

  Replication mechanisms · CPC title

• G06F11/1451

  by selection of backup contents · CPC title