Patent ID: 8478726

Claim:
At a computer system including at least one processor and a memory, in a computer networking environment including a plurality of computing systems including plurality of data storage nodes and a backup node, a computer-implemented method for simultaneously backing up data from the plurality of data storage nodes to the backup node, the method comprising: an act of the computer system receiving a backup command from a user, the backup command indicating that a specified portion of data of a parallel database is to be backed up to a backup node, wherein the specified portion of data is stored across a plurality of different data storage nodes of the parallel database; based on receiving the backup command, an act of the computer system generating a plurality of backup commands, including generating a different backup command for each of the plurality of data storage nodes, each different backup command being configured to instruct the corresponding data storage node to initiate a backup of a corresponding piece of the specified portion of data that is stored at the corresponding data storage node, such that the plurality of backup commands are configured to initiate a parallel backup from the plurality of data storage nodes to a single data store at the backup node; and an act of the computer system initiating execution of the generated plurality of backup commands at each of the plurality of data storage nodes in a parallel manner, such that the corresponding piece of data from each of the plurality of different data storage nodes is backed up in the data store at the backup node in parallel.