Commvault Systems, Inc.

A hosting service enables streamlined scaling of features that relate to data storage management. The scaling is powered by deployment of microservices, each one directed to a discrete feature of a data storage management system. In addition to scaling on demand, the disclosed hosting service provides additional value-added features, such as streamlining intra-system handling, auditing, and reporting of logs generated by microservices; standardizing exception handling; mediating port assignments for co-located microservices to avoid collisions; streamlining formats for inter-microservice communications; streamlining local database access; etc. Advantageously, the disclosed solution off-loads the storage manager, and additionally improves system performance by scaling various functions and by streamlining interoperability among components. Furthermore, the disclosed solution also enables the hosting service in general, and each discrete microservice in particular, to be enhanced, deployed, and scaled separately and asynchronously from each other and from the storage manager.

A data storage management system comprises features for initiating failover orchestration jobs that invoke recovery resources on demand in a cloud computing environment. Backed up data that is stored persistently in the cloud computing environment may be rapidly restored within the cloud computing environment for use in disaster recovery and/or in test and verification scenarios. This approach may be contrasted to systems where a failover system is “always on” at the failover destination, such as having failover resources always up and running in the cloud computing environment. Such resources typically include a failover virtual machine (VM), a virtual machine datastore for the restored data, and one or more computing resources for restoring an auxiliary copy to the VM's datastore. The cloud-based failover resources are deactivated or taken down once the failover event ends.

Systems described herein may dynamically add one or more proxy agents to a cloud data storage system to process an information management job, such as restore job. Upon completion of the job or at some other appropriate interval, the system can power down and decommission the proxy agents and/or the virtual machines on which the proxies reside according to a cleanup schedule (e.g., at hourly or minute intervals). The system takes into account currently existing proxies or virtual machines when processing a restore request to determine the need for new proxies to service the restore request. In this manner the system can save costs and computing resources through efficient virtual machine deployment and retirement.

Systems and methods disclosed herein improve on current technology for block-level data replication to cloud computing environments. A new system architecture deploys one or more replication tail proxies in a cloud computing environment, locally (at the cloud) tracks replicated data and determines which replicated data meet criteria for reconstructing a desired point-in-time in the cloud, and persists data blocks received at the replication tail proxy until they are processed as recovery points. The disclosed approach presents resiliency and performance advantages. First, the resiliency of block-level data replication to cloud is improved by deploying the replication tail proxy in the destination cloud. Second, a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is reduced by enabling faster cloud deployment of virtual machines for disaster recovery, failover, and/or test purposes based on the replicated data.

An information management system according to certain aspects may be configured to generate a snapshot of data relating to a plurality of applications. The system may include a plurality of data agents, wherein each data agent is associated with at least one of a plurality of applications, and data generated by the plurality of applications is stored in a logical volume in primary storage. The system may also include a snapshot manager configured to detect the plurality of applications; check with the plurality of data agents whether the associated applications are in consistent states; obtain a snapshot of the logical volume in response to receiving notifications from the plurality of data agents that the associated applications are in consistent states; and generate mapping information between a particular one of the plurality of applications and a portion of the snapshot relating to the particular one of the plurality of applications.

Distributed architecture for executing information management services using shared platform microservices, containerization techniques, and regional core services. This architecture decentralizes the traditional model by segmenting the various functions of the centralized control and information manager into modular cloud microservices. This modularization not only enhances system flexibility but also allows for a more dynamic configuration, with certain elements being deployable as containers. The resilient architecture leverages the inherent scalability and adaptability of cloud technology.

An information management system according to certain aspects is provided to perform archiving based on third-party application rules and third-party metadata. The system may include a third-party archiving data agent that can access archiving rules and/or metadata of a third-party application. The third-party archiving data agent may be a data agent that can access archiving rules and/or metadata of a third-party application, and can include or be in the form of a plug-in for a particular third-party application. The third-party archiving data agent can decide whether to archive a file associated with a third-party application by checking the third-party metadata associated with the file and determining whether the metadata meets the third-party archiving rules. The system can perform the archiving on behalf of the third-party application, and in certain embodiments, notify the third-party application that the archiving has been completed.

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.

An information management system can detect instances in which data is being stored in a non-standard file path and can alert the user of the client computing device, modify the storage policy to include the non-standard file path, and/or initiate a secondary copy operation to prevent data loss of the data stored in the non-standard file path. For example, a client computing device may execute a filter driver that monitors interactions with files in the file system. The filter driver can identify any non-standard file paths not subject to a storage policy that include files in which interactions occurred. For a non-standard file path, the filter driver can determine whether the frequency of interaction with files in the non-standard file path satisfies a threshold frequency. If the threshold is satisfied, then the filter driver may determine that the files should be subject to the storage policy and take appropriate action.

A method for automatically encrypting files is disclosed. In some cases, the method may be performed by computer hardware comprising one or more processors. The method can include detecting access to a first file, which may be stored in a primary storage system. Further, the method can include determining whether the access comprises a write access. In response to determining that the access comprises a write access, the method can include accessing file metadata associated with the first file and accessing a set of encryption rules. In addition, the method can include determining whether the file metadata satisfies the set of encryption rules. In response to determining that the file metadata satisfies the set of encryption rules, the method can include encrypting the first file to obtain a first encrypted file and modifying an extension of the first encrypted file to include an encryption extension.