Submitted by According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site, Google acquired 188 patents and another 29 patents pending from IBM in a deal recorded December 30.[..]The newest batch of patents from IBM have only a handful of mobile telephony applications. Instead, they are rich in database intellectual property.
Patent #:6983352
Issue Dt:01/03/2006
Application #:10464877
Filing Dt:06/19/2003
Publication #:US20040260894
Title:SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR POINT IN TIME BACKUPS
i kinda got lost in the leagalize but this looks a lot like how i am using Oracle’s ZFS file system at work to backup ZFS pools and partitions
A system and method for performing a point in time backup is presented. A backup application initiates a point in time backup whereupon a backup tracker monitors write requests during the point in time backup. The backup tracker logs data block locations that have already been backed up whose content changes in response to a write request. After a first pass of backing up data blocks, the backup application backs up the changed data blocks. During the changed data block backup procedure, the backup application invokes a copy on write command for particular changed data blocks that receive write requests prior to their content being backed up. The copy on write command stores the particular changed data block’s content in a temporary storage area in which the backup application retrieves when the backup application is ready to backup the particular changed data blocks.
zfs snapshot to create a point and time reference
zfs clone to prepare for a backup
. these 2 steps keep track of changing blocks in a bitmap reference file
zfs send / zfs receive to push the cloned point in time reference to our backup server
. all new/modified blocks are created with copy on write (actually true with any zfs write)
zfs destroy clone and snapshot
. removes all the old blocks that have been replaced and clears reference bitmap
there seems to be a few differences . there is no backup application unless you argue zfs send is actually an application and not the file system . zfs send does not send the new or modified blocks at the end .
does anyone have better insight to how zfs matches up to this patent ?
-Nich
Why create a clone? Why not backup straight from the snapshot?
This patent might have RAID implications.