Patent ID: 8688645

Claim:
A method of restoring data between a source storage system managing data for a plurality of host devices and a destination storage system, comprising: quiescing a file system associated with the source storage system associated with a first storage operating system through a backup engine associated with the source storage system and the destination storage system associated with a second storage operating system, the source storage system being configured to have data associated with the source storage system backed up at the destination storage system, and the second storage operating system being configured to implement a file system different from the file system implemented through the first storage operating system; capturing, at the source storage system, a point-in-time image, a snapshot of the file system associated with the source storage system through the backup engine; sharing the captured point-in-time image of the file system associated with the first storage operating system of the source storage system with the destination storage system to enable the source storage system and the destination storage system to have a common base data; negotiating between the source storage system and the destination storage system for the common base data, wherein during the negotiating, the destination storage system sends a list of point-in-time images to the source storage system and the source storage system uses the sent list to obtain the common base data; and applying, to the common base data at the source storage system, a differential change corresponding to a difference between the common base data at the destination storage system and a point-in-time image of the file system of the source storage system backed up at the destination storage system, the point-in-time image of the file system of the source storage system backed up at the destination storage system being configured to be in an immediate temporal past relative to a backup of the data to be restored to the source storage system at the destination storage system and in a temporal past relative to the common base data at the destination storage system.