Patent ID: 8572434

Claim:
A computerized method for system monitoring comprising: receiving, by an emulating computing device, backup set metadata, wherein the backup set metadata comprises information about backup data sets that are received by a backup storage system that stores the backup data sets; and emulating, by the software monitor computing device, the manner in which data within the backup data sets flow through a processing flow path of the backup storage system comprising: executing, by the emulating computing device, one or more processes that process the backup set metadata through an emulated processing flow path, wherein the one or more processes are also implemented in the backup storage system to process the backup data sets through the processing flow path; determining, by the emulating computing device, two or more potential processing states within the emulated processing flow path; determining, by the emulating computing device, a reason code for each backup set metadata entry of the backup set metadata indicative of a reason that the backup set metadata entry is in a processing state of the two or more potential processing states; and identifying, by the emulating computing device, a problem with the manner in which the backup set metadata is flowing through the emulated processing flow path based on the reason codes.