NetApp, Inc.
Data block name based efficient restore of multiple files from deduplicated storage

Abstract:

A storage appliance can be designed to facilitate efficient restore of multiple backed up files in a system that allows files to share data blocks. A data management application or storage OS names data blocks and communicates those names to the storage appliance when backing up to or through the storage appliance. The storage appliance can leverage the data block names when restoring a group of files by restoring at data block granularity instead of file granularity. Restoring at the granularity of the data blocks by their names allows the storage appliance to avoid repeatedly sending a same data block to the restore requestor (e.g., a storage OS or data management application) while still instructing the restore requestor how to reconstruct the corresponding file(s) with mappings between valid data ranges and the named data blocks.