Patent ID: 7225210

Claim:
A system comprising: an initiator including: a collection of files, each of the files containing data apportioned into blocks of data; a first block level hardware interface; a first block level communication interface configured to transmit and receive the blocks of data via the first block level hardware interface; a storage containing data segregated into nodes; and a snapshot server including: a node level hardware interface communicatively linked with the storage; a second block level hardware interface communicatively linked to the first block level hardware interface of the initiator; a second block level communication interface configured to exchange blocks of data with the initiator via the second block level hardware interface; a node level snapshot management configured to generate snapshots of the nodes of data contained in the storage; and an agent associated with the collection of files, the agent configured to translate first blocks of data received from the initiator into corresponding first nodes of data to be sent via the node level hardware interface to the storage, the agent configured to translate second nodes of data received from the storage into corresponding second blocks of data to be sent to the initiator.