System and method for virtualizing backup images

• US 8,346,726 B2
• Filed: 06/23/2006
• Issued: 01/01/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Catalogic Software, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Syncsort Incorporated
• Inventors: Liu, Peter Chi-Hsiung, Acharya, Soubir
• Primary Examiner(s): Kerzhner, Aleksandr
• Application Number:
  US11/993,643
• Publication Number:
  US 20090222496A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,384 Days
• Field of Search: 707/204, 707/640, 707/999.204
• US Class Current: 707/640
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1453 using de-duplication of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1456 Hardware arrangements for backup
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1469 Backup restoration techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2074 Asynchronous techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/16 Protection against loss of memory contents contains no material, see G06F11/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus

Abstract

Facility for using images created by backup software to recreate an entire machine as it was at the point in time in the past when the backup was taken. The facility can be extended so as to bring up a set of machines which together serve some logical business function as in a cluster or federated servers, and further extended so that an entire data center may be virtualized from backup images. The virtualized servers provided may serve as an alternate data center standing in case of disaster or to meet maintenance windows achieving low cost Instant Disaster Recovery. A set of virtual machines may stand in for physical machines for a period of time and then resynchronized or re-seeded to physical machines via a combination of bare metal recovery and re-synchronizing from live LXJNs that form the virtual machine disks.

Claims

1. A method for virtualizing a physical machine from a backup image of said physical machine, comprising:

creating a backup image of said physical machine in a format for a virtual machine image for a virtualization server, further comprising saving together therewith, supplemental to said image, machine configuration information of said physical machine, said machine configuration information comprising persistent and volatile state; and

loading said backup image as a virtual machine image under said virtualization server, wherein the method of loading said backup image comprises;

a) selecting a node (or a set of nodes) representing said physical machine from said backup image, wherein said backup image comprises an application-consistent image as of a specific point-in-time of primary storage where the production data of said physical machine resides, and is taken from the latest point in time or any other point in time;

b) transforming said backup image into a LUN by creating a pseudo-file which presents an envelope on top of said backup image;

c) reading metadata comprising said machine configuration information saved in conjunction with said backup image and using said metadata to issue directives for creating a virtual machine; and

d) booting said virtual machine from said LUN.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising maintaining the integrity of said backup image by writing newly created and/or changed data separately.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising impregnating said LUN with a boot record appropriate for the operating system, and creating partition table jumps and fixing the boot sector of the file system if needed.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising modifying data and/or configuration on said LUN so that booting from said LUN may succeed.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising copying all blocks in the background from said image to said LUN.

6. A method for virtualizing a plurality of physical machines comprising:

a) creating a backup image of each said physical machine in a format for a virtual machine image for a virtualization server, further comprising saving together with each said backup image, supplemental to said image, machine configuration information of the corresponding physical machine, said machine configuration information comprising persistent and volatile state;

b) creating each said backup image as a snapshot of the corresponding physical machine, said snapshot comprising an application-consistent image as of a specific point in time of primary storage where the production data of said physical machine resides;

c) saving together with said machine configuration information saved with said backup image, information representing the state of the network connections of said physical machine;

d) loading said backup images as a plurality of virtual machine images under said virtualization server;

e) loading said saved information regarding network connections together with said backup images, and using such information to recreate within said virtualization server the network connections of each such physical machine.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein said plurality of physical machines represent computers in a data center, wherein a plurality of said physical machines have network connections to each other and said method is employed to create a virtualization of the data center, in which said network connections are restored.