Patent ID: 8676763

Claim:
A system for remote protection and restoration of data in a networked storage computing environment, the system comprising: a bus; a processor coupled to a bus; a memory medium coupled to the bus, the memory medium comprising instructions, the instructions executed by the processor to: determine whether to perform a remote data protection process based at least on whether a maximum number of snapshots has been exceeded and whether a previously created snapshot exists; record data and associated metadata at specific points-in-time based on policies that enforce both a recovery point objective (RPO) that defines a maximum time period in which loss of the data is allowed and a recovery time objective (RTO) that defines a duration of time in which the data must be restored after a disruption to a network attached storage appliance, wherein the network attached storage appliance is part of a storage cluster that provides computing storage services and offers a computing device access to a common set of data consolidated from a plurality of user systems; copy the data and the associated metadata into backup files; generate a data structure with pointers to the backup files, based on a schedule configured to achieve the RPO and the RTO, wherein the data structure with pointers to the backup files comprises a file path associated with a status and at least one of the pointers to the backup files, wherein the status indicates whether data at a location specified by the file path is newly created, has been modified since a previous backup copy was performed, or is unchanged since the previous backup copy was performed; transfer the backup files to one or more backup locations for storage on an electronic storage device; request one or more restore-points from a user; extract backup files from one or more backup locations by utilizing the data structure with pointers to the backup files; transfer the backup files from the one or more backup locations to one or more restore locations; and restore data and its associated metadata at the one or more restore locations, based on the one or more restore-points from the user.