Recovering a file system to any point-in-time in the past with guaranteed structure, content consistency and integrity
View Patent ↗A data management system (DMS) includes a continuous real-time object store that captures all real-time activities, with associated object metadata information. The DMS is capable of reintroducing any point-in-time view of data ranging from a granular object to an entire file system. A set of algorithms (for creation of a file or directory, modification of a file or directory, deletion of a file or directory, and relocation/renaming of a file or directory) are used to generate and maintain a file system history in the DMS and to ensure that a latest version of a directory always refers to a latest version of its children until the directory changed. Any point-in-time recovery is implemented using the file system history in one of various ways to provide strong individual file integrity, exact point-in-time crash consistency, and/or recovery of last version of all files in the file system.
1. A machine-implemented data management method, comprising:
capturing, in real time, application data transactions of a data source;
deciding whether to accumulate the captured application data transactions;
receiving, from the data source, an application-aware data stream formed from the captured application data transactions;
wherein the received application-aware data stream represents a continuous real-time history of the data source;
storing in a data store the continuous real-time history of the data source, or a component thereof, as an object-oriented logical representation;
dynamically restructuring the object-oriented logical representation in response to one or more events occurring in the continuous real-time history;
wherein, for a relocation event, the dynamically restructuring comprises relocating based on object instance where object versions connect across at least a portion of a lifetime of an object wherever the object is relocated; and
using the object-oriented logical representation to provide an any point-in-time recovery of the data source.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the received application-aware data stream comprises:
events;
metadata; and
data changes.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the any point-in-time recovery of the data source has a recovery consistency characteristic.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the object-oriented logical representation comprises at least a set of version metadata pages, and a set of one or more links that associate the version metadata pages of the set of version metadata pages.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the object-oriented logical representation further comprises the entire binary content of a file associated with the data source.
6. The method of claim 4 wherein the object-oriented logical representation provides an n-dimensional logical representation of the data source at a given point in time.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein the data source is physically remote from the data store.
8. The method of claim 7 wherein the continuous real-time history of the data source provides one of: a data protection service and a data distribution service.
9. The method of claim 1 wherein the any point-in-time recovery of the data source includes recovery of one of: a file, a sub-directory, a file system volume, and a set of files that belong to a database.
10. The method of claim 9 wherein the set of files that belong to the database span one or more volumes.
11. The method of claim 1 further including extracting an audit trail from the data source identifying, for a given object, a change and an identifier associated with a user who initiated the change.
12. The method of claim 1 wherein capturing application data transactions occurs on the data source.
13. The method of claim 1 wherein capturing application data transactions occurs on a network data-source data path.
14. The method of claim 1 wherein exact point-in-time crash consistency constructs an image of the data source at a recovery point by obtaining a latest version and applying changes after the latest version and up to the recovery point.
15. The method of claim 1 wherein last version of all files in the data source recovers all files up to a latest version regardless of whether a state of a given file is consistent or suspect.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the recovery consistency characteristic is selected from the group consisting of: strong individual file integrity, exact point-in-time crash consistency, and last version of all files.
17. The method of claim 1 , wherein, for the relocation event, the dynamically restructuring comprises relocating based on object path where object versions connect when an object associated with a directory remains in the directory when relocated.
18. The method of claim 1 , wherein, for the relocation event, the dynamically restructuring comprises relocating based on a combination of object path and object instance.
19. A system comprising at least one processor, wherein the at least one processor is operable to implement a method comprising:
capturing, in real time, application data transactions of a data source;
deciding whether to accumulate the captured application data transactions;
receiving, from the data source, an application-aware data stream formed from the captured application data transactions;
wherein the received application-aware data stream represents a continuous real-time history of the data source;
storing in a data store the continuous real-time history of the data source, or a component thereof, as an object-oriented logical representation;
dynamically restructuring the object-oriented logical representation in response to one or more events occurring in the continuous real-time history;
wherein, for a relocation event, the dynamically restructuring comprises relocating based on object instance where object versions connect across at least a portion of a lifetime of an object wherever the object is relocated; and
using the object-oriented logical representation to provide an any point-in-time recovery of the data source.
20. A computer-program product comprising a non-transitory computer-usable medium having computer-readable program code embodied therein, the computer-readable program code adapted to be executed to implement a method comprising:
capturing, in real time, application data transactions of a data source;
deciding whether to accumulate the captured application data transactions;
receiving, from the data source, an application-aware data stream formed from the captured application data transactions;
wherein the received application-aware data stream represents a continuous real-time history of the data source;
storing in a data store the continuous real-time history of the data source, or a component thereof, as an object-oriented logical representation;
dynamically restructuring the object-oriented logical representation in response to one or more events occurring in the continuous real-time history;
wherein, for a relocation event, the dynamically restructuring comprises relocating based on object instance where object versions connect across at least a portion of a lifetime of an object wherever the object is relocated; and
using the object-oriented logical representation to provide an any point-in-time recovery of the data source.