Patent ID: 7412583

Claim:
A method for managing incremental storage, the method comprising: monitoring available storage capacity of an existing incremental backup virtual volume and changing a storage capacity of the of the existing incremental backup virtual volume in response to a storage management policy and the available storage capacity, wherein the existing incremental backup virtual volume stores incremental storage data from an incremental storage operation of a primary volume and the existing incremental backup virtual volume comprises at least one storage volume of a storage pool, the at least one storage volume allocated to the existing incremental backup virtual volume; dynamically allocating and de-allocating a storage volume of the storage pool to the existing incremental backup virtual volume in response to a change to the storage capacity of the existing incremental backup virtual volume; and mapping in an incremental log corresponding to the existing incremental backup virtual volume a virtual address of the existing incremental backup virtual volume assigned to the incremental storage data to a physical storage address of the at least one storage volume of the storage pool.