Data replication can be used to ensure consistency among software or hardware resources in a storage network. In operation, data on a primary server or device is backed up, or replicated, on a secondary file server or device. Therefore, if data is ever lost on the primary server, the replicated data can be recovered from the secondary server. The servers can be local or remote with respect to one another and can be connected via a network such as a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), or metropolitan area network (MAN).
In existing platforms, data is replicated based on a replication policy that specifies how the data is to be replicated from the primary server to the secondary server. In particular, the replication policy includes defined inputs that specify where, when, or how the data is to be replicated, among other relationships. However, the defined inputs are limited to location attributes associated with the secondary server. Therefore, an administrator of the storage network is locked into generating a replication policy based on the secondary server location when implementing the policy framework. As a result, an administrator is not able to generate or modify a data replication in a storage network to accommodate a wide range of attributes associated with the resources of the storage network.
Therefore, it may be desirable to provide systems and methods for replicating data objects within a storage network based on resource attributes. In particular, it may be desirable to allow a user to specify count selections and resource attributes in generating a replication policy.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds