US 12,242,357 B2
Balancing of slices with consolidation and re-slicing
Soumen Acharya, Bangalore (IN); Aaditya Rakesh Bansal, Bangalore (IN); and Upanshu Singhal, Bangalore (IN)
Assigned to Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX (US)
Filed by Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX (US)
Filed on Apr. 26, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/660,773.
Prior Publication US 2023/0342259 A1, Oct. 26, 2023
Int. Cl. G06F 16/30 (2019.01); G06F 11/14 (2006.01); H04L 67/1095 (2022.01); H04L 67/1097 (2022.01)
CPC G06F 11/1464 (2013.01) [G06F 11/1451 (2013.01); H04L 67/1095 (2013.01); H04L 67/1097 (2013.01); G06F 2201/84 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method for protecting data in a network attached storage (NAS) platform, of which a share includes slices of data, where each of the slices is usable to create a respective incremental backup of a dataset, said method being further for grouping the data in the NAS platform in a manner to facilitate parallel stream backups of the data, said method comprising:
accessing the share of the NAS platform, wherein the NAS platform is associated with a backup platform that is configured to use multiple parallel streams to back up the slices of data of the share;
determining a first size of a first slice of data that is included in the share of the NAS platform;
determining a second size of a second slice of data that is included in the share of the NAS platform;
determining that the first size of the first slice exceeds a threshold;
determining that the second size of the second slice does not exceed the threshold;
in response to determining that the first size of the first slice exceeds the threshold, re-slicing the first slice to generate new slices, wherein each of the new slices has a corresponding size that is smaller than the threshold, and wherein re-slicing the first slice to generate the new slices is performed using a scaling and performance consideration in which a backup efficiency by which the share was previously backed up is caused to be at least maintained after the first slice is re-sliced based on how the first slice is re-sliced;
in response to determining that the second size of the second slice does not exceed the threshold, determining that a re-slicing operation will not be performed on the second slice, such that re-slicing is performed for a limited number of the slices of the share and is not performed for all the slices of the share during said re-slicing; and
generating a slice list that includes the new slices,
wherein:
the slices of the share include one slice which includes leftover files that are independent of directories and files in any other slices and cannot be consolidated into any other slices, and
one of the slices is not an actual slice and resides directly in the share.