Patent ID: 8489552

Claim:
A method to generically perform a granular restore from a volume image backup, comprising: booting the volume image backup into a virtual environment, wherein the volume image backup comprises a backup image of a source volume comprising an operating environment, a first backup system agent, and a first application, and wherein booting the volume image backup into the virtual environment simulates the operating environment of the source volume; receiving input selecting one or more application objects of the first application on the volume image backup to restore to a corresponding application on a restore target, wherein the one or more application objects comprise application data at a higher level of granularity than application files; retrieving the selected one or more application objects from the volume image backup, wherein said retrieving is performed by the first backup system agent within the virtual environment; sending the selected one or more application objects from the first backup system agent to a second backup system agent on the restore target; restoring the selected one or more application objects to the corresponding application on the restore target, wherein said restoring is performed by the second backup system agent.