Patent ID: 8719286

Claim:
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 to back up a subdirectory of one or more files stored in the source VM disk file, identifying file records of the one or more files of the requested subdirectory based on the metadata stored in the file index; and communicating with the VMM of the source storage system via the API to back up the identified file records associated with the subdirectory 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 remaining files in the source VM disk file.