Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for efficiently creating a data fingerprint to identify or characterize contents of a data object by using a selection function to select a plurality of non-contiguous regions from the data object, the selected regions each having a small number of bytes relative to the number of bytes in the data object and being distributed throughout the data object so that the selected regions comprise a sparse subset of the data of the data object yet provide a significant probability of including bytes that change if the data object were modified; and performing a hash operation on the data to produce a fingerprint based on the sparse subset of the data object. The data fingerprint thereby efficiently provides an indication of the contents of the data object, so that comparing data fingerprints can determine if the data objects are different if the corresponding fingerprints are different.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for an asynchronous data replication system in which the remote replication reduces bandwidth requirements by copying deduplicated differences in business data from a local storage site to a remote, backup storage site, the system comprising: a local performance storage pool for storing data; a local deduplicating storage pool for storing deduplicated data, said local deduplicating storage pool further storing metadata about data objects in the system and which has metadata analysis logic for identifying and specifying differences in a data object over time; a remote performance storage pool for storing a copy of said data, available for immediate use as a backup copy of said data to provide business continuity to said data; a remote deduplicating storage pool for storing deduplicated data; and a controller for synchronizing the remote performance storage pool to have the second version of the data object using deduplicated data.

Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for efficiently creating a data fingerprint to identify or characterize contents of a data object by using a selection function to select a plurality of non-contiguous regions from the data object, the selected regions each having a small number of bytes relative to the number of bytes in the data object and being distributed throughout the data object so that the selected regions comprise a sparse subset of the data of the data object yet provide a significant probability of including bytes that change if the data object were modified; and performing a hash operation on the data to produce a fingerprint based on the sparse subset of the data object. The data fingerprint thereby efficiently provides an indication of the contents of the data object, so that comparing data fingerprints can determine if the data objects are different if the corresponding fingerprints are different.

Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for copying a data object to a target storage pool using a hybrid of storage pools, in which at least one of the storage pools is particularly efficient at identifying data that should be used for copying the data object to the target storage pool, and at least one of the storage pools is particularly efficient at retrieving the data that should be sent to the target storage pool. The system comprises a performance storage pool for storing data and having relatively high performance for retrieving stored data; a deduplicating storage pool for storing deduplicated data and storing metadata about data objects in the system and which has relatively high performance for identifying and specifying differences in a data object over time; and a controller for causing the performance storage pool to retrieve differences and provide the data to the target storage pool.

Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for checking the data integrity of a data object copied between storage pools by comparing data fingerprints of data objects, comprising scheduling a series of successive copy operations over time for copying a data object from a source data store to a target data store; generating a partial fingerprint of the data object at the source data store that creates a fingerprint from a subset of the data object; sending the partial fingerprint of the data object to the target data store; sending any new data contents to the target data store; and creating a partial fingerprint of the data object at the target data store and comparing it to the received partial fingerprint to determine if they differ, thereby allowing incremental verification that the copy of the data object at the target data store is the same as at the source data store.

Abstract: Systems and methods for backing-up data from a first storage pool to a second storage pool using difference information between time states are disclosed. The system has a data management engine for performing data management functions, including at least a back-up function to create a back-up copy of data. By executing a sequence of snapshot operations to create point-in-time images of application data on a first storage pool, each successive point-in-time image corresponding to a specific, successive time-state of the application data, a series of snapshots is created. The snapshots are then used to create difference information indicating which application data has changed and the content of the changed application data for the corresponding time state. This difference information is then sent to a second storage pool to create a back-up copy of data for the current time-state.