Patent ID: 7340486

Claim:
A method for generating a snapshot of a virtual logical disk of a storage system, comprising: operating a computer data storage system in a first computer, the first computer performing I/O operations with application buffers, the first computer writing contents of the application buffers to a file system operating in a second computer; writing data received from the first computer into file system buffers maintained by the second computer; maintaining a virtual logical disk by the second computer; writing data in the file system buffers to the virtual logical disk; receiving a backup command, the backup command initiating a backup of the virtual logical disk; moving, in response to receiving the backup command, data contents of the application buffers of the first computer to the file system buffers of the second computer; blocking input/output (I/O) operations directed to the virtual logical disk after the data contents of the application buffers of the first computer are written to the file system buffers of the second computer; writing, in response to the application buffers of the first computer being written to the file system buffers of the second computer, the contents of the file system buffers to the virtual logical disk; and generating a snapshot of the virtual logical disk while the I/O operations directed to the virtual logical disk are blocked.