Patent ID: 7809917
Filing Date: 2010-10-05
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for managing incremental storage, the apparatus comprising: a policy management module that sets a storage management policy for storage capacity of an existing incremental backup virtual volume, wherein the existing incremental backup virtual volume stores incremental storage data from an incremental storage operation of a primary volume and the existing incremental backup virtual volume comprises at least one storage volume of a storage pool; a storage pool management module that monitors available storage capacity of the existing incremental backup virtual volume and to change the storage capacity of the existing incremental backup virtual volume in response to the storage management policy and the available storage capacity, wherein changing the storage capacity comprises dynamically allocating and de-allocating a storage volume of the storage pool to the existing incremental backup virtual volume in response to the change to the storage capacity; and an incremental log corresponding to the existing incremental backup virtual volume, wherein the incremental log maps a virtual address of the existing incremental backup virtual volume assigned to the incremental storage data to a physical storage address of the at least one storage volume of the storage pool wherein the policy management module and the storage module comprise at least one of logic hardware elements and executable code, the executable code stored on one or more computer readable media.