Patent ID: 8209290

Claim:
A method to generically perform a granular restore from a volume image backup, comprising: booting the volume image backup into a virtual environment, wherein the volume image backup comprises an image of the entire contents of a computer system, wherein the volume image backup comprises a first backup system agent, wherein the virtual environment comprises a virtual processor configured to execute program instructions comprised on the volume image backup; receiving input selecting one or more application objects of an application on the volume image backup for restore, wherein the one or more application objects comprise application data at a higher level of granularity than application files; retrieving the selected one or more application objects from the volume image backup, wherein said retrieving is performed by the first backup system agent executing on the virtual processor within the virtual environment, wherein said retrieving comprises utilizing at least one live API provided by an application comprised on the volume image backup, wherein the at least one live API executes on the virtual processor within the virtual environment; sending the selected one or more application objects from the first backup system agent to a second backup system agent on a restore target; restoring the selected one or more application objects on the restore target, wherein said restoring is performed by the second backup system agent.