A first cloud vendor is registered by a backup application. A file is moved from backup storage of the backup application to the first cloud vendor. A reference is maintained at the backup storage to the first file residing at the first cloud vendor. A second cloud vendor is registered by the backup application. The backup application directs a migration of the file from the first cloud vendor to the second cloud vendor without recalling the file to the backup storage. A reference maintained at the backup storage is updated to refer to the file now residing at the second cloud vendor. The updated reference is maintained at the backup storage.

An intelligent method of handling incremental backups concurrent with load balancing movement. The file system uses placement tags, incremental backup requests and capacity balancing data movement to make intelligent decision to avoid affecting any backup windows for clients or backup apps. The file system tracks capacity balancing file movements inside the cluster. When switching locations of files in a cluster from one node to another, it is performed as an atomic change of switching inode attributes by the file system after the contents of the file have been copied over to the new node. During the file movement for capacity balancing, the file system handles requests for full backups differently than requests for incremental backups. The file system continues to handle virtual systhesis and fastcopy requests on the node that hosts the previous backup to ensure that the incremental backup succeeds with the expected smaller backup window from the client.

Described is a system (and method) that intelligently distributes data within a clustered storage environment. To provide such a capability, the system may distribute backup files by considering a source of the data to be backed-up. In particular, the system may leverage the ability of front-end components such as a backup application to perform a granular data source identification of data. Such information may be propagated to back-end components such as a storage filesystem in the form of a data source identifier (e.g. placement tag). The data source identifiers may then be accessed by the clustered storage system to intelligently distribute backup files amongst a set of storage nodes forming a cluster. For example, backup files from the same data source may be stored on the same storage node to obtain the same deduplication efficiency as a single storage system.

A method for managing a data record in a computer system comprises: at least one computing server for hosting a computer session running with an operating system having a deduplication index and managing access to a session storage space; a shared storage space; an administration server for administering the shared storage space, executing a data management program; the computer session executing an interception program implementing the following steps: intercepting a read call to read at least one data record transmitted in the session; accessing the deduplication index and determining whether the data record is recorded in the shared storage space; if so, reading, from the deduplication index, the address of the data record in the shared storage space and redirecting the read call to this address; if not, overlooking the read call so that it is processed by the operating system.

Described is a system for leveraging incremental backup metadata of a deduplication storage system to perform an efficient data restore. The system may reference metadata stored as part of incremental backup infrastructure to determine only the changes to the data that occurred subsequent to the restore point. As a result, the system may reduce data read processing by retrieving only the changed data from the deduplication storage system. Moreover, the system may reduce the required bandwidth for the restore by providing only the changed data to a target device of the restore. Data retained by the client system such as the current version of the data may then be overwritten with the reduced set of data to complete the restore. As a result, the system may perform an efficient restore by reducing read accesses and bandwidth requirements, and thus, improve overall restore performance.

A request is received to restore a file at a deduplicated storage system to a client. The file resides at the storage system as a synthetic file based on a base file at the storage system. The request includes an indication that the base file is also present at the client. Metadata generated during a backup of the file to the storage system is reviewed. The metadata includes references to data determined to be in the base file at the storage system, and references to other data determined to not be in the base file at the storage system. The other data determined to not be in the base file is read from the storage system and transmitted to the client. Upon receipt, the client assembles the requested file using the base file present at the client and the other data determined to not be in the base file.

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.

A method, apparatus, and system for managing backup resource on a cloud for a plurality of backup servers is disclosed. A resource configuration for each cloud storage is received. The resource configuration includes allocated cloud resource amount and duration. Cloud operation utilization is calculated for each cloud storage. The cloud operation utilization is compared with the resource configuration to determine a total cloud operation utilization for each cloud storage. A plurality of rules is applied in view of the total cloud operation utilization to determine a plurality of cloud storage operational states. The cloud storage is configured to be in one of the plurality of cloud storage operational states based on the plurality of rules to limit an amount of data to be transmitted to and stored in the cloud storage within a predetermined period of time.

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.

Systems and methods for storage pruning can enable users to delete, edit, or copy backed up data that matches a pattern. Storage pruning can enable fine-grain deletion or copying of these files from backups stored in secondary storage devices. Systems and methods can also enable editing of metadata associated with backups so that when the backups are restored or browsed, the logical edits to the metadata can then be performed physically on the data to create a custom restore or a custom view. A user may perform operations such as renaming, deleting, modifying flags, and modifying retention policies on backed up items. Although the underlying data in the backup may not change, the view of the backup data when the user browses the backup data can appear to include the user's changes. A restore of the data can cause those changes to be performed on the backup data.