POINT-IN-TIME BACKUPS OF A PRODUCTION APPLICATION MADE ACCESSIBLE OVER FIBRE CHANNEL AND/OR ISCSI AS DATA SOURCES TO A REMOTE APPLICATION BY REPRESENTING THE BACKUPS AS PSEUDO-DISKS OPERATING APART FROM THE PRODUCTION APPLICATION AND ITS HOST

摘要

The present enhancement leaves production systems undisturbed while a remote application (“testbed application”) executes elsewhere (“testbed host”). An intermediary computing device hosts an enhanced pseudo-disk driver, pseudo-disks, and an enhanced media agent. The enhanced pseudo-disk driver creates the pseudo-disks, each one representing an associated point-in-time backup image residing in secondary storage. A network, e.g., an Internet Protocol (IP) network or a Fibre Channel (FC) Storage Area Network (SAN), connects the intermediary device with the testbed host, and the enhanced media agent exposes pseudo-disks over the network using iSCSI or FC protocol, respectively. The testbed application uses an exposed pseudo-disk as its recovery data source, such that pseudo-disk resources provide data on an as-needed basis sufficient for the testbed application to operate, yet (a) without restoring the entire associated backup image from secondary storage and (b) without impacting the production environment.

主权项

1. A method for executing an application in a storage management system apart from a production environment, the method comprising:
storing a secondary copy to a secondary storage device that is in communication with a secondary storage computing device,
wherein the secondary copy is a block-level point-in-time backup of primary data for a first application that operates on a client computing device in the production environment,wherein the secondary storage computing device hosts a media agent and a pseudo-disk driver, andwherein the secondary storage computing device is in communication over a network with a host computing device that hosts a second application; instructing, by the media agent, the pseudo-disk driver to generate a pseudo-disk corresponding to the secondary copy; generating the pseudo-disk on the secondary storage computing device, by the pseudo-disk driver,
wherein the generating comprises creating (i) a first data structure for storing data recalled from the secondary copy, (ii) a second data structure for storing data written by the second application, and (iii) an input-output buffer for receiving read and write requests from the second application and for responding thereto, andwherein the generating further comprises associating the pseudo-disk with the secondary copy; exposing the pseudo-disk as a SCSI storage device over the network to the host computing device; executing the second application on the host computing device using the exposed pseudo-disk as the second application's recovery point,
wherein data written by the second application is stored to the second data structure of the pseudo-disk; and wherein the second application uses the pseudo-disk without restoring the secondary copy in its entirety from the secondary storage device.