Patent ID: 7937547

Claim:
A method for making a backup copy of a primary system, that is mountable on the same or other computer system on an immediately available basis, and for providing an immediately available restoration of said backup copy to a restoration system, comprising: providing a base-level snapshot, stored on a secondary system, of the primary system; providing block-level incremental snapshots of the primary system, stored on the secondary system, representing only the blocks that have changed since the prior snapshot, wherein the base-level and block-level incremental snapshots of the primary system further comprise application-specific metadata; constructing a read-only logical disk image from at least one of said snapshot images; transforming aid the read-only logical disk image into an iSCSI addressable read-write LUN by creating a sparse file backed by the read-only logical disk image, and exposing the LUN; and mapping the restore volume to the local namespace of the restoration system, so that it can be used as a mounted restore volume containing both backup data and application-specific metadata.