Patent ID: 8751515
Filing Date: 2014-06-10
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: parsing, by a backup engine, a source virtual machine (VM) disk file associated with a VM to generate metadata representing a plurality of files stored in a virtual storage device of the VM, the VM being one of one or more VMs hosted by a VM monitor (VMM) of a source storage system, wherein the backup engine operates in a backup server that is communicatively coupled to the source storage system over a network, wherein the backup engine remotely accesses the source VM disk file via an application programming interface (API) of the VMM of the source storage system over the network, wherein the backup server is configured to communicate with a plurality of source storage systems over the network and to back up data from the plurality of source storage systems; generating, by the backup engine, a file index based on the metadata representing the source VM disk file based on the parsing of the source VM disk file; in response to a request for an incremental backup of files stored in the source VM disk file, examining based on a file attribute of each of the files from the file index to identify one or more files that have been modified within a predetermined past period of time; determining from the file index one or more file records associated with the identified files that have been modified within the predetermined past period of time; and transmitting, by the backup engine, to the VMM of the source storage system via the API, information representing the identified file records to back up the identified file records from the source VM disk file to a target VM disk file of a target storage system that is remote to the source storage system over the network, without having to back up unmodified files in the source VM disk file.