Patent ID: 11947990
Assignee: COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 14:
15. A data storage management appliance comprising:
one or more hardware processors and computer memory for executing programming instructions;
data storage; and
a block-level backup copy of a second virtual machine hosted by a second hypervisor, wherein metadata from the second hypervisor was not included in the block-level backup copy of the second virtual machine;
wherein the data storage management appliance is configured to:
execute a virtual server data agent, a media agent, and a first hypervisor, which hosts a first virtual machine, wherein the media agent is communicatively coupled to the first hypervisor;
instruct the first hypervisor to use the data storage as a virtual disk for the first virtual machine;
create an association between the virtual disk and the block-level backup copy;
cause the first virtual machine to be powered up, wherein the first virtual machine is communicatively coupled to the data storage as the virtual disk for the first virtual machine;
intercept a first read request issued by the first virtual machine and addressed to the virtual disk;
based on determining that a first data block requested in the first read request is not in the data storage, retrieve the first data block from the block-level backup copy, and store the first data block into the data storage, and serve the first data block from the data storage to the first virtual machine in response to the first read request;
based on determining that a second data block requested in a second read request issued by the first virtual machine is present in the data storage, serve the second data block from the data storage to the first virtual machine in response to the second read request; and
reclaim storage space in the data storage by discarding the first data block therefrom based on determining that the first data block was previously retrieved from the block-level backup copy.