Patent ID: 11886303
Assignee: COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A system comprising:
a plurality of computing devices, wherein each computing device among the plurality of computing devices comprises one or more hardware processors and computer memory;
wherein a second computing device among the plurality of computing devices is configured to:
at runtime of a backup operation of first data, select, from among the plurality of computing devices, a first computing device to perform the backup operation,
wherein the first data is stored at a shared file storage, and
wherein to select the first computing device from among the plurality of computing devices, the second computing device is configured to determine that at least one of:
(a) a file system of the first computing device is configured to natively read the first data from the shared file storage, and
(b) a file system communication protocol at the first computing device is configured to natively access the first data at the shared file storage;
wherein the first computing device is configured to: communicate with the shared file storage using the file system communication protocol, and is further configured to communicate with secondary storage for storing one or more secondary copies of the first data generated by the backup operation; and
wherein the second computing device comprises a data grouping definition that indicates the first data, and further comprises a preference that indicates the secondary storage for storing secondary copies of the first data, and
wherein neither the data grouping definition nor the preference indicates that the first computing device is to be selected to perform the backup operation.