Patent ID: 8898115

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for using data archiving to expedite server migration, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing system comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: identifying data stored on a plurality of source physical computing systems; archiving at least a portion of the data stored on the plurality of source physical computing systems to a physical archiving system in accordance with an archiving policy; identifying metadata associated with the archived data on the physical archiving system, the metadata referencing the plurality of source physical computing systems; altering metadata associated with the archived data on the physical archiving system so that the metadata references a target physical computing system instead of the plurality of source physical computing systems prior to bringing the target physical computing system online; consolidating the plurality of source physical computing systems to the target computing system by: bringing the target physical computing system online; upon bringing the target physical computing system online, restoring at least a portion of the archived data from the physical archiving system to the target physical computing system instead of directly copying a non-archived instance of the portion of the data from the plurality of source physical computing systems to the target physical computing system.