System and method for virtualizing backup images

• US 9,329,941 B2
• Filed: 11/29/2012
• Issued: 05/03/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Catalogic Software, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Catalogic Software, Inc.
• Inventors: Liu, Peter Chi-Hsiung, Acharya, Soubir
• Primary Examiner(s): Ly, Anh
• Application Number:
  US13/689,224
• Publication Number:
  US 20130086347A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,251 Days
• Field of Search: 707/640, 707/999.204, 707/649, 707/781, 707/782, 707/784, 707/610, 707/E17.032, 707/E17.005, 718/1, 718/100, 718/102, 718/104, 711/162, 711/1, 711/114, 711/111, 711/112, 711/203, 711/6, 711/147, 711/161, 711/100, 714/6, 714/9, 714/5, 714/11, 709/206, 709/203, 709/207, 709/208, 709/223, 709/213, 709/226, 709/218, 709/219
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 LUNs that form the virtual machine disks.

Claims

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

a) 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, wherein creating said backup image of said physical machine comprises;

taking a base-level snapshot of said 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;

taking block-level incremental snapshots of said physical machine, where the incremental snapshots represent only the blocks that have been changed since the prior snapshot; and

constructing the incremental snapshots in a manner that can be used directly as a mounted storage unit;

b) loading said backup image as a virtual machine image under said virtualization server;

c) running said virtual machine and processing new input therewith;

d) restarting said physical machine at a time subsequent to said backup; and

thereafter

e) synchronizing existing data on said physical machine with the data on said virtual machine subsequent to the processing new input.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said backup image is a snapshot of said physical machine, comprising an application-consistent image as of a specific point-in-time of primary storage where the production data of said physical machine resides.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of creating said backup image of said physical machine further comprises:

storing the snapshot image on a storage device; and

saving said machine configuration information at the point-in-time of each snapshot image, with the snapshot image.

4. 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, wherein creating said backup image of each said physical machine comprises;

taking a base-level snapshot of said 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;

taking block-level incremental snapshots of said physical machine, where the incremental snapshots represent only the blocks that have been changed since the prior snapshot; and

constructing the incremental snapshots in a manner that can be used directly as a mounted storage unit;

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

c) running said plurality of virtual machines and processing new input therewith;

d) restarting said physical machines at a time subsequent to said backup; and

thereafter

e) synchronizing existing data on said physical machines with the data on said virtual machines subsequent to the processing new input.