Patent ID: 7502961

Claim:
A method for informing a user of the state of a data protection system, comprising: monitoring activities of the data protection system, the data protection system including a data protector that communicates with a production location and a storage location to protect data of the production location, the data protector receives from a user a protection intent indicating how data of the production location is to be protected, the protection intent selected from a group consisting of replication of the data of the production location to the storage location, validation of data of the storaae location, and creation at the storage location temporal versions of the data of the production location, the data protector implementing the received protection intent; determining if there are any potential problems with the data protection system in implementing the received protection intent for the production location, the potential problems including determining whether a copy of data of the production system stored at the storage location by the data protector is valid and whether copying a last temporal version of the data of the production location to the storaae location completed successfully; if it is determined that there are no potential problems with the data protection system, providing a user an informational report regarding the state of the data protection system; if it is determined that there are potential problems with the data protection system, determining the severity of the potential problem; classifying the potential problem based on the severity of the problem; and providing the user with a report corresponding to the classification of the potential problem so that the user can determine whether the data protector is correctly implementing the protection intent of the user.