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BACKGROUND

Businesses recognize the commercial value of their data and seek reliable, cost-effective ways to protect the information stored on their computer networks while minimizing impact on productivity. A company might back up critical computing systems such as databases, file servers, web servers, virtual machines, and so on as part of a daily, weekly, or monthly maintenance schedule. The company may similarly protect computing systems used by its employees, such as those used by an accounting department, marketing department, engineering department, and so forth. Given the rapidly expanding volume of data under management, companies also continue to seek innovative techniques for managing data growth, for example by migrating data to lower-cost storage over time, reducing redundant data, pruning lower priority data, etc. Enterprises also increasingly view their stored data as a valuable asset and look for solutions that leverage their data. For instance, data analysis capabilities, information management, improved data presentation and access features, and the like, are in increasing demand.

SUMMARY

In some cases, a bottleneck may be created in an information management system by components or systems of the information management system that help regulate the processing of data across the information management system. As the number of client devices supported by the information management system increases, the bottleneck can worsen, which can reduce the availability of computing resources within an information management system. This reduction in resource availability can include a reduction in hardware processor availability and/or storage availability. In some cases, it is not possible to scale the number of supported client devices to a desired level or amount because of the constraint on available resources at the information management system.

One example where users may notice the reduction in resource availability due to communication bottlenecks in the information management system is in the backup or restore context. A storage manager may trigger a backup process for a client, such as a laptop. Each time the backup process is to be performed, the storage manager will alert the client and provide metadata to the client that, among other features, instructs the client regarding the availability of resources to perform the backup process. The client may then communicate data for backup to a media agent along with metadata to facilitate indexing the data at a backup location, such as a network storage site or a secondary storage disk. Further, the storage manager may provide metadata to the media agent instructing the media agent regarding resources to use to complete the backup, the type of backup to perform, and other backup related features or decisions. When the information management system includes a large number of clients (such as 10,000, 20,000, 100,000, or 200,000 clients), the communication with the storage manager during the backup process can cause a bottleneck in the backup process when a large number or percentage of the clients are to be backed up simultaneously or substantially in parallel. Similar problems may occur in the restore context.

Certain embodiments disclosed herein reduce or eliminate the bottleneck by reducing communication with the storage manager. In some implementations, a client obtains information for enabling a secondary storage job (e.g., a backup or restore) from a storage manager and stores the information (which may be referred to as job metadata) in a local cache. The client may then reuse the job metadata for multiple storage jobs reducing the frequency of communication with the storage manager. When a configuration of the information management system changes, or the availability of resources changes, the storage manager can push updates to the job metadata to the clients. Further, a client can periodically request updated job metadata from the storage manager ensuring that the client does not rely on out-of-date job metadata.

Further, certain embodiments disclosed herein enable a client of the information management system to communicate data directly with a cloud or network storage system while providing index data or backup metadata to the media agent. Advantageously, in certain embodiments, by separating the data and the backup metadata, the burden on computing resources of the media agent can be reduced. In certain embodiments, by distributing backup management, at least in part, to the client systems, communications with the storage manager and the media agent during backup and restore operations can be reduced. Further, the distributed backup management enables the information management system to be scaled to support a greater number of client devices while utilizing the same amount or fewer computing resources compared to non-distributed backup management systems.

