Patent ID: 8438247

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for capturing a representation of a data set, the data set being distributed among a plurality of physical storage devices each accessible by at least one corresponding server operable to receive instructions from one or more storage interfaces to cause corresponding operations for data in the data set to be performed, the method comprising: under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions, receiving an instruction from a client device to capture the representation of the data set at a point in time, the point in time based at least in part on a capture policy specified by the client device; and responsive to at least the instruction to capture the representation of the data set: issuing, to the one or more storage interfaces, a first command to suspend at least acknowledgment of completion of write operations to an application of the client device; for each of the one or more storage interfaces, receiving a first notification that the storage interface has suspended processing of at least acknowledgment of completion of the write operations; at a time after receiving the first notification for each of the one or more storage interfaces, instructing each of the servers to enqueue an instruction to capture a representation of a portion of the data set stored in a corresponding physical storage device and subsequently resume acknowledging completion of the write operations, the captured representation of the portion of the data set associated with the point in time; and storing the captured representation of the portion of the data set.