Method and system for no downtime resynchronization for real-time, continuous data protection

Abstract

A data management system or “DMS” provides an automated, continuous, real-time data protection service to one or more data sources associated with a set of application host serves. To facilitate the service, a host driver embedded in an application server captures real-time data transactions. When a data protection command for a given data source is forwarded to a host driver, an event processor enters into an initial upload state. During this state, the event processor gathers a list of data items to be protected and creates a data list. Then, the event processor moves the data to a DMS core to create initial baseline data. The upload is a stream of application-aware data chunks that are attached to upload events. A resynchronization state is entered when there is a suspicion that the state of the data in the host is out-of-sync with the state of the most current data in the DMS.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 862,971, filed Jun. 8, 2004, titled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR NO DOWNTIME RESYNCHRONIZATION FOR REAL-TIME, CONTINUOUS DATA PROTECTION. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 862,971, U.S. Pat. No. 7,096,392, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,565,661 are incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Technical Field[0003]The present invention relates generally to enterprise data protection.[0004]2. Background of the Related Art[0005]A critical information technology (IT) problem is how to cost-effectively deliver network wide data protection and rapid data recovery. In 2002, for example, companies spent an estimated $50 B worldwide managing data backup / restore and an estimated $30 B in system downtime costs. The “code red” virus alone cost an estimated $2.8 B in downtime, data loss, and recovery. The reason for these staggering costs is simple-traditional schedule b...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

A critical information technology (IT) problem is how to cost-effectively deliver network wide data protection and rapid data recovery.

The “code red” virus alone cost an estimated $2.8 B in downtime, data loss, and recovery.

The reason for these staggering costs is simple-traditional schedule based tape and in-storage data protection and recovery approaches can no longer keep pace with rapid data growth, geographically distributed operations, and the real time requirements of 24×7×265 enterprise data centers.

First, critical data can change as the snapshot is taken, which results in incomplete updates (e.g., half a transaction) being captured so that, when reintroduced, the data is not fully consistent.

Second, changes in data occurring after a snapshot is taken are always at risk.

Third, as storage device size grows, the bandwidth required to repeatedly offload and store the complete snapshot can become impractical.

Most importantly, storage based snapshot does not capture fine grain application data and, therefore, it cannot recover fine grain application data objects without reintroducing (i.e. recovering) the entire backup volume to a new application computer server to extract the fine grain data object.

Data recovery on a conventional data protection system is a tedious and time consuming operation.

As these separate and distinct processes and systems are carried out, there are significant periods of application downtime.

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