Creating point-in-time versions of files for applications at a storage system includes maintaining at the storage system a data structure correlating each of a plurality of applications with files for each of the applications and correlating each of the files with portions of the data storage system, using the data structure to determine specific files for a particular one of the applications for which a point-in-time version is being created, using the data structure to determine specific portions of the storage system corresponding to the specific files, suspending writes to the specific portions, completing previous writes to the specific portions following suspending writes, and performing a snapshot of the specific files following completing previous writes. The portions of the data storage may be extents. A host may provide information to the storage system to correlate applications with files and to correlate files with portions of the data storage system.

Certain embodiments described herein relate to an improved synthetic full backup image generation system. In some embodiments, one or more components in an information management system can identify a file-server-created backup copy in a particular backup format of a plurality of backup formats, determine structure information associated with the particular backup format, and generate a synthetic full backup copy according to the structure information, where the synthetic full backup copy is also in the particular backup format identical to that of the file-server-created backup copy.

An intelligent method of selecting a data recovery site upon receiving a data recovery request. The backup system collects historical activity data of the storage system to identify work load of every data recovery site. A predicted activity load for each data recovery site is then generated using the collected data. When a request for data recovery is received, the system first identifies which data recovery site has copies of the files to be recovered. Then it uses the predicted work load for these data recovery sites to determine whether to use a geographically local site or a site that may be remote geographically, but has a lower work load.

A system and method are presented that identify new, modified, unchanged, and deleted files in an incremental backup through a file list maintained on the backup destination. The FileList is a flat file in which file information about each file on a source node is stored sequentially into the file. During a subsequent incremental backup, the FileList is read sequentially from the backup destination and is used to generate a search tree. A hash value based on the file path is the key to the search tree, with the file's modified time and size being hashed together to form the value of the tree's key-value pair. Files are examined on the source and compared to the key-value pairs in the search tree. Status information in the search tree is modified to indicate discovered files. Unmodified status information identifies files that have been deleted since the previous backup.

According to certain disclosed techniques, tolerance time lengths respectively associated with backup sessions are acquired, wherein a tolerance time length represents the length of time in which data loss is tolerated during a failure of a source storage device associated with a backup session of the plurality of backup sessions. A backup period for performing the backup sessions is determined based on the tolerance time lengths. The backup period is divided into time slices based on a predetermined time interval. At least one time slice is allocated to the backup session based on the tolerance time length. Accordingly, it is possible to ensure that corresponding time slices allocated for each backup session are distributed as evenly as possible throughout the time of day, thus ensuring load balancing of the backup system.

Described methods and systems for copying a source volume to a target volume that include a combination of concurrent copying and a copy-on-write (COW) technique that improves the reliability of the backup process and requires fewer resources during a given backup instance than the processes of the prior art.

In some examples, a computing device may store a first snapshot of a state of data in a first partition at a first point in time. The computing device may create a second partition and a third partition to each receive a portion of the data, the second partition and the third partition each including a metrics schema, and may determine information for the metrics schemas based on information in the first snapshot. During the determining of the information for the metrics schemas, the computing device may receive a write to the first partition. The computing device may update the first partition based on the write and may add a split update command to a data structure based on the write. In addition, the computing device may update at least one of the metrics schemas in the second partition or the third partition based on the split update command.

Methods and apparatus for protecting data. Backup copies of data are created in real time and restoration of this backup data is enabled. For example, backup repositories of files stored in a primary storage device of a computer system may be created by examining information concerning the files to determine critical fields therein, and storage of the critical fields to a critical storage device and of non-critical fields and tags that are substituted for the critical fields to a context storage device effected. Following compromise of the files stored in the primary storage device, accesses by applications may be directed to the context storage device, e.g., as a means of rapid failover, and/or for each file stored in the context storage device, record-by-record copying of such files to the primary storage device may be effected to restore the contents of the primary storage device.

Embodiments are described for a heuristic configuration selection process as part of or accessible by the backup management process. This processing component provides a method to automatically determine the configuration parameters needed to obtain optimal performance for a given backup/restore job. This process involves identifying key parameters that determine backup performance and suggest means to derive and incorporate those configurable parameters into the backup software automatically. Embodiments can be applied to stream based backups, or other types of backup software as well.

In general, the invention relates to a method for backing up data. The method includes receiving a backup instruction from a client device, wherein the backup instruction comprises a backup tag corresponding to a backup operation for a user asset, making a first determination that the backup tag matches a second backup tag specified in a tag file, and in response to the first determination, identifying a checkpoint of a backup associated with the second backup tag, and resuming the backup operation at the checkpoint for the user asset.