Patent ID: 8442949

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for using data archiving to expedite server migration, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing system comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: archiving data from at least one source computing system to an archiving system in accordance with an archiving policy; altering metadata associated with the archived data on the archiving system so that the metadata references a desired target computing system that is currently offline instead of the source computing system; preparing the target computing system to be brought online based at least in part on the altered metadata by copying at least one reference to at least a portion of the archived data on the archiving system to the target computing system in order to enable restoration of the portion of the archived data to the target computing system; upon bringing the target computing system online, restoring the portion of the archived data from the archiving system to the target computing system by using the reference copied to the target computing system to access the portion of the archived data.