Patent ID: 9104331
Filing Date: 2015-08-11
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving at a storage system a virtual machine (VM) snapshot from a host system, the snapshot representing a consistent state of a VM hosted by the host system, wherein the storage system is communicatively coupled to the host system over a storage network, wherein the VM snapshot was captured by a virtual machine monitor (VM) in response to a first request received from a backup application server via a VMM application programming interface (API) over a network, and wherein the VMM manages a plurality of VMs within the host system; storing the VM snapshot in a persistent storage device of the storage system as a VM disk image file; receiving a second request at the storage system for an incremental backup of the VM from the backup application server over the network, the second request including a VM identifier identifying a requested VM disk image associated with a consistent state of the VM; in response to the second request, identifying by backup logic of the storage system the VM disk image file corresponding to the requested VM disk image from the persistent storage device based on the VM identifier; determining, by a disk change tracker of the storage system, a difference between the requested VM disk image and a previous VM disk image representing a previous VM backup; and transmitting, by the backup logic of the storage system, changes between the requested VM disk image and the previous VM disk image to a target backup storage system directly without going through the backup application server, wherein the backup application server is a separate server for managing backup of a plurality of storage systems over the network.