Abstract: Data storage operations, including content-indexing, containerized deduplication, and policy-driven storage, are performed within a cloud environment. The systems support a variety of clients and cloud storage sites that may connect to the system in a cloud environment that requires data transfer over wide area networks, such as the Internet, which may have appreciable latency and/or packet loss, using various network protocols, including HTTP and FTP. Methods are disclosed for content indexing data stored within a cloud environment to facilitate later searching, including collaborative searching. Methods are also disclosed for performing containerized deduplication to reduce the strain on a system namespace, effectuate cost savings, etc. Methods are disclosed for identifying suitable storage locations, including suitable cloud storage sites, for data files subject to a storage policy.

Abstract: Certain embodiments disclosed herein reduce or eliminate a communication bottleneck at the storage manager by reducing communication with the storage manager while maintaining functionality of an information management system. In some implementations, a client obtains information for enabling a secondary storage job (e.g., a backup or restore) from a storage manager and stores the information (which may be referred to as job metadata) in a local cache. The client may then reuse the job metadata for multiple storage jobs reducing the frequency of communication with the storage manager. When a configuration of the information management system changes, or the availability of resources changes, the storage manager can push updates to the job metadata to the clients. Further, a client can periodically request updated job metadata from the storage manager ensuring that the client does not rely on out-of-date job metadata.

Abstract: Described herein are techniques for better understanding problems arising in an illustrative information management system, such as a data storage management system, and for issuing appropriate alerts and reporting to data management professionals. The illustrative embodiments include a number of features that detect and raise awareness of anomalies in system operations, such as in deduplication pruning operations. Such anomalies can include delays in the processing of archive files to be deleted and/or delays in the generation of the list of archive files to delete. Anomalies are characterized by frequency anomalies and/or by occurrence counts. Utilization is also of interest for certain key system resources, such as deduplication databases, CPU and memory at the storage manager, etc., without limitation.

Abstract: The present inventors devised techniques and technologies that streamline the protection of data stored on shared file storage e.g., on file servers, network-attached storage (NAS), share drives, network shares, etc., in a data storage management system. Some embodiments feature a proxy-less backup configuration in which backup services hosts are assigned to perform a secondary copy job, at job runtime, based on host attributes relative to the data source. Some embodiments are configured to, at job runtime, automatically resolve data paths to the source data, and automatically mount the data paths, rather than requiring data paths to be expressly pre-administered on all possible candidate backup machines. Some embodiments automatically protect data from shared file storage that was not expressly given a backup plan (“undefined” data) by applying default preferences for protecting undefined data.

Abstract: Systems and methods are described herein for graphically representing an information management system based on the characteristics of within the system. The systems and methods interface with various components of the system (e.g., administrative components, index components, and so on) to identify data having certain characteristics (e.g., personal data), and generate or render information (e.g., a heat map or other visual display) that represents areas or locations within the system storing the data. Thus, the systems and methods, in some embodiments, generate or create a data-specific view into the information management system.

Abstract: A method and system for communicating with IoT devices to gather information related to device failure or error(s) is disclosed. The system makes a copy of at least a portion of the device's non-volatile memory and/or receives IoT device data (e.g., sensor data and/or log files etc.) from an IoT device that recently failed. The system determines which log files and/or sensor data, for example, the IoT device created before and/or after a failure. After gathering this information, the system stores the information in a database, sends it to the IoT device manufacturer, for further analysis and diagnostics to troubleshoot the failure and send a fix or software update to the IoT device.

Abstract: A holistic approach protects serverless applications in various cloud and/or non-cloud data center computing environments. An illustrative data storage management system deploys, or causes to be deployed, a discovery tracker function in a customer's cloud service account. The discovery tracker identifies and tracks what applications are executing therein, whether they are already known to the illustrative system or not. This aspect ensures that the system is up-to-date with a customer's cloud deployments, so that it may timely back up active applications, and conversely, so that it may dispose properly of copies of applications that are no longer deployed. The discovery tracker discovers application assets, relationships, and interoperability dependencies. The illustrative system creates a corresponding “application entity” that references the various assets. An orchestration function coordinates storage management operations to generate a set of copies of the application's discovered assets.

Abstract: A data storage system according to certain aspects can share a single snapshot for multiple applications and/or agents. For example, the data storage system can receive snapshot commands from multiple applications and/or agents, and can group them for a single snapshot (e.g., based on time of receipt of the snapshot commands). Data associated with the multiple applications and/or agents may reside on a single LUN or volume. The data storage system can take a single snapshot of the LUN or volume, and generate metadata regarding which portion of the snapshot is related to which application. The single snapshot can be stored in one or more secondary storage devices. The single snapshot may be partitioned into portions relating to different applications and stored separately.

Abstract: A system according to certain aspects improves the process of performing snapshot replication operations (e.g., maintaining a mirror copy of primary data at a secondary location by generating snapshots of the primary data). The system can collect and maintain cumulative block-level changes to the primary data after each sub-interval of a plurality of sub-intervals between the snapshots. When a snapshot is generated, any changes to the primary data not reflected in the cumulative block-level changes are identified based on the snapshot and transmitted to the secondary location along with the cumulative block-level changes. By the time the snapshot is generated, some or all of the changes to the primary data associated with the given snapshot have already been included in the cumulative block-level changes, thereby reducing the time and computing resources spent to identify and collect the changes for transmission to the secondary location.

Abstract: Disclosed methods and systems leverage resources in a storage management system to restore a selected backup to a production site. The backup is partitioned into blocks with associated signatures. The production site may have blocks that have not changed from when the backup occurred, so those blocks do not need to be restored. Block signatures from the production site are compared with block signatures from the incremental backup to identify blocks that need to be restored. Efficiency may be achieved by synchronizing the replacement blocks from more easily accessible location where available before synchronizing from less accessible locations. In some embodiments, a user may specify the location of the site with the replacement blocks.

Abstract: The present inventors devised a holistic approach for protecting serverless applications in single-cloud, multi-zone, multi-cloud, and/or non-cloud data center computing environments. An illustrative data storage management system discovers application assets, relationships, and interoperability dependencies and creates an “application entity” that references the various assets. Protection preferences apply to the application entity as a whole. An orchestration function in the system coordinates storage management operations (e.g., backup, replication, live synchronization, etc.) in a suitable order of operations gleaned from asset dependencies, if any. A set of copies of the application's discovered assets are generated in coordinated fashion and represent a point-in-time copy of the application. The point-in-time copy can be restored and/or migrated to other computing services by the data storage management system.

Abstract: A system for performing continuous transaction log backups with minimal resource usage of the client computing devices that are processing the transactions is disclosed. The system detects at least one input/output (I/O) activity at a client computing device. The I/O activity can be associated with at least one database operation performed via the client computing device. The system then executes one or more native commands to backup transactions log data associated with the detected I/O activity to a virtualized location. Backing-up the transactions log data comprises dynamically identifying a mount path location corresponding to the virtualized location, and transferring the transactions log data to the dynamically identified mount path using the one or more native commands. The system can then perform data processing operations (for example, data chunking and deduplicating) on the transactions log data after it is received at the dynamically identified mount path location.

Abstract: An information management security health monitoring system is provided herein that can monitor the security health of one or more information management systems, identify any security issues that are occurring within an information management system, and automatically, or in response to a user input, transmit an instruction to the information management system to execute a workflow to resolve the security issue(s). For example, the information management cell health monitoring system receives security data and security policies, and/or similar data from an information management cell(s) via a network. The information management security health monitoring system analyzes the received information to identify any issues. If an issue is detected, the information management security health monitoring system retrieves workflows and determines whether any of the workflows can be used to resolve the detected issue.

Abstract: An information management system according to certain aspects can implement application archiving. The system may archive one or more applications on computing devices to make more storage space available on these devices. The system can determine which applications on client computing device to archive based on various factors. Some examples of factors can include frequency of use, application type, amount of application data and/or storage, user and/or device location, etc. The data to be archived can include one or more executable file(s), metadata, actual data, etc. After an application is archived, the system can generate a placeholder for the application; a placeholder can include information for restoring the archived application.

Abstract: A storage manager for an information management system determines whether one or more predetermined conditions have been met for transferring metadata of previously performed backup jobs stored in a first management database. A backup job may correspond to a backup operation of a primary storage device of a first client computing device. In response to a determination that one or more of the predetermined conditions have been met, the storage manager may transfer metadata for a second plurality of backup jobs to a second management database of a recovery manager. The recovery manager may receive a request to restore data to the primary storage device of the first client computing device based on the metadata of the second plurality of backup jobs. A media agent managed by the recovery manager may then restore the requested data to the primary storage device of the first client computing device.

Abstract: According to certain aspects, a secondary computing system can be configured to perform a full backup on database data, generate incremental backups comprising log files associated with modifications to the database data, and create a differential full backup copy of the database data using the full backup copy and changed blocks identified using the log files from the incremental backups.

Abstract: An illustrative data storage management system comprises “awareness logic” that executes on computing devices hosting storage management components such as storage manager, data agent, media agent, and/or other storage management applications. The illustrative awareness logic operates within each of these illustrative components, e.g., as a thread within processes of the storage management component, such as storage management core process, file identifier process, log monitoring process, etc. The awareness logic monitors the targeted process over time and triggers remedial action when criteria are met. Certain vital statistics of each process are collected periodically and analyzed by the illustrative awareness logic, such as CPU usage, memory usage, and handle counts. Criteria for corrective action include rising trends based on local minima data points for one or more vital statistics of the process. Other criteria include exceeding a threshold based on a logarithm function of the collected data points.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure enable data protection operations including differential and incremental backups by performing changed-block tracking in network or cloud computing systems with architectures that do not natively support changed-block tracking or do not expose changed-block tracking functionality to an information management system. In certain aspects, an identity of changed blocks may be obtained by using a hypervisor configured to interface with the cloud computing architecture. The identified changed blocks may be used to generate a map of the changed blocks. The maps of the changed blocks can be used by a virtual server agent to extract the changed blocks from a copy of a virtual machine disk and backed up to perform a differential or incremental backup.

Abstract: An illustrative data storage management system comprises a management database that stores administrative preferences and system configurations, as well as results and/or statistics of completed secondary storage operations, i.e., information needed by the system to protect customers' data and to track and recover the protected data, including secondary copies such as backup copies, archive copies, etc. The disclosed data storage management system is configured to protect its own system data subject to a very aggressive (short) Recovery Point Objective (RPO), by using an innovative infrastructure that enables the system's storage manager to fail over to any number of other failover destination storage managers, each one comprising a destination management database. An illustrative database granularly tracks whether each and every transaction log file has been successfully applied to each and every destination management database to synchronize with the source management database.

Abstract: An illustrative “Live Synchronization” feature in a data storage management system can reduce the downtime that arises in failover situations. The illustrative Live Sync embodiment uses backup data to create and maintain a ready (or “warm”) virtualized computing platform comprising one or more virtual machines (“VMs”) that are configured and ready to be activated and take over data processing from another data processing platform operating in the production environment. The “warm” computing platform awaits activation as a failover solution for the production system(s) and can be co-located at the production data center, or configured at a remote or disaster recovery site, which in some embodiments is configured “in the cloud.” Both local and remote illustrative embodiments are discussed herein. An “incremental forever” approach can be combined with deduplication and synthetic full backups to speed up data transfer and update the disaster recovery sites.