A method for managing file based backups (FBBs) includes obtaining, by a backup agent, a backup request for a FBB, in response to the backup request, generating a FBB, generating a FBB metadata file corresponding to the FBB, wherein the FBB metadata file comprises a set of attribute regions, performing, using the set of attribute regions, a deduplication on the FBB metadata file to obtain a deduplicated FBB metadata file, and storing the deduplicated FBB metadata file in a backup storage system.

In connection with a data distribution architecture, client-side “deduplication” techniques may be utilized for data transfers occurring among various file system nodes. In some examples, these deduplication techniques involve fingerprinting file system elements that are being shared and transferred, and dividing each file into separate units referred to as “blocks” or “chunks.” These separate units may be used for independently rebuilding a file from local and remote collections, storage locations, or sources. The deduplication techniques may be applied to data transfers to prevent unnecessary data transfers, and to reduce the amount of bandwidth, processing power, and memory used to synchronize and transfer data among the file system nodes. The described deduplication concepts may also be applied for purposes of efficient file replication, data transfers, and file system events occurring within and among networks and file system nodes.

A method of similarity-based deduplication comprising the steps of: receiving an input data block; computing discrete wavelet transform (DWT) coefficients; extracting feature-related DWT data from the computed DWT coefficients; applying quantization to the extracted feature-related DWT data to obtain keys as results of the quantization; constructing a locality-sensitive fingerprint of the input data block; computing a similarity degree between the locality-sensitive fingerprint of the input data block and a locality-sensitive fingerprint of each data block in the plurality of the data blocks in a cache memory; selecting an optimal reference data block as the data block; determining a differential compression is required to be applied based on the similarity degree between the input data block and the optimal reference data block; applying the differential compression to the input data block and the optimal reference data block.

A method, apparatus, and system for transmitting file system metadata from an indexing splitter running in a VM to a source side RPA is disclosed. The operations comprise: capturing one or more file system events in a production virtual machine (VM) at an indexing splitter; transmitting file system metadata representing the captured file system events from the indexing splitter to a data splitter, the data splitter being an agent running on a host system hosting the VM; transmitting the file system metadata inside one or more special input/output (I/O) commands associated with a predetermined tag from the data splitter to a source side replication protection appliance (RPA) alongside regular storage system I/O command data; identifying the special I/O commands at the source side RPA based on the predetermined tag; and recovering the file system metadata from the special I/O commands at the source side RPA.

An apparatus stores received data blocks as deduplicated data blocks. The apparatus is configured to: maintain a plurality of containers, where a reference to a container is unique within the apparatus and each container includes one or more data segments and segment metadata for each data segment, the segment metadata including a segment identifier and a segment reference, where the segment identifier is unique within the container and the segment reference is unique within the apparatus; and maintain a plurality of deduplicated data blocks storing received data blocks, where each deduplicated data block includes a plurality of identified container references, where a container reference identifier is unique within the deduplicated data block, and an ordered list of one or more segment indicators.

An apparatus in one embodiment comprises at least one processing device comprising a processor coupled to a memory. The processing device is configured to identify at least first and second datasets to be scanned to generate a data reduction estimate for a prospective combination of the first and second datasets, to designate a scan criterion to be utilized in the scan of each of the datasets, and for each of a plurality of pages of each of the datasets, to scan the page, where scanning the page comprises performing a computation on the page to obtain a page result, determining whether or not the page result satisfies the designated scan criterion, and responsive to the page result satisfying the designated scan criterion, updating a corresponding entry of a data reduction estimate table for the dataset. The processing device merges contents of the data reduction estimate tables, and generates the data reduction estimate based at least in part on the merged contents.

A method and system for live-mounting database backups. Specifically, disclosed method and system entail recovering database data—in entirety or at any granular level—without needing to provision storage resources for point-in-time database copies (i.e., backup database data), or without needing to wait for large amounts of data, representative of the point-in-time database copies, to traverse a network from backup storage to a target device. Substantively, through live-mounting, the physical point-in-time database data, as well as the associated structural metadata, may be retained on backup storage while a pointer-based snapshot, mapping to the physical point-in-time database data and structural metadata, may be generated thereon. Thereafter, a file system—mapping to the pointer-based snapshot on the backup storage—may be mounted on the target device, which exposes an interface through which the backup database data may be accessed and/or manipulated using a distributed file system protocol.

A method performed by a block-storage server, of storing data is described. The method includes (1) receiving, from a remote file server, data blocks to be written to persistent block storage managed by the block-storage server; (2) receiving, from the remote file server, metadata describing files to which the data blocks belong in a set of filesystems managed by the remote file server; and (3) selectively applying data reduction when storing the data blocks in the persistent block storage based, at least in part, on the received metadata. An apparatus, system, and computer program product for performing a similar method are also provided.

One example method includes receiving a write request that includes a data structure version to be written, wherein the data structure version is associated with a unique identifier, storing the data structure version in association with the unique identifier, receiving a read request for a most recent version of the data structure and, when the stored data structure version is not the most recent version of the data structure, examining respective unique identifiers of each of a group of other stored data structure versions to determine which stored data structure version is the most recent. Finally, the example method includes returning the most recent data structure version, notwithstanding that one or more other data structure versions existed at the time that the read request was received.

In connection with a data distribution architecture, client-side “deduplication” techniques may be utilized for data transfers occurring among various file system nodes. In some examples, these deduplication techniques involve fingerprinting file system elements that are being shared and transferred, and dividing each file into separate units referred to as “blocks” or “chunks.” These separate units may be used for independently rebuilding a file from local and remote collections, storage locations, or sources. The deduplication techniques may be applied to data transfers to prevent unnecessary data transfers, and to reduce the amount of bandwidth, processing power, and memory used to synchronize and transfer data among the file system nodes. The described deduplication concepts may also be applied for purposes of efficient file replication, data transfers, and file system events occurring within and among networks and file system nodes.