System and method for incremental virtual machine backup using storage system functionality

• US 9,348,702 B2
• Filed: 07/10/2015
• Issued: 05/24/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Hsu, Windsor W., Xing, Jian
• Primary Examiner(s): Elmore, Reba I
• Application Number:
  US14/797,033
• Publication Number:
  US 20150317209A1
• Time in Patent Office: 319 Days
• Field of Search: 711/156, 711/161, 711/165, 711/206, 711/209, 710/28, 710/308, 709/212, 709/232, 707/633, 707/638, 707/639, 707/646, 707/659, 707/667
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1438 Restarting or rejuvenating
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1448 Management of the data involved in backup or backup restore
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1479 Generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/08 in hierarchically structured memory systems, e.g. virtual memory systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/12 Replacement control
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/121 using replacement algorithms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/13 File access structures, e.g. distributed indices arrangements of input from, or output to, record carriers G06F3/06
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/188 Virtual file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45583 Memory management, e.g. access or allocation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/84 Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46

Abstract

Techniques for virtual machine incremental backup are described herein. According to one embodiment, a request for an incremental backing up a virtual machine (VM) is received at a storage system, the request identifying a requested VM disk image associated with a consistent state of the VM. The storage system determines a difference between the requested VM disk image and a previous VM disk image representing a previous VM backup. The changes between the requested VM disk image and a previous VM disk image are then transmitted to a target backup storage system.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method to back up virtual machines, the method comprising:

receiving a request at a first storage system for an incremental backup of a virtual machine (VM) from a backup application server over a network, the request including a VM identifier identifying the VM to be backed up from the first storage system to a second storage system, wherein the VM is hosted by a first host system communicatively coupled to the first storage system over a storage network, wherein the backup application server is a separate server configured to manage backups of a plurality of storage systems, including the first storage system and the second storage system;

in response to the request, identifying by backup logic of the first storage system a first VM disk image file from a persistent storage device of the first storage system based on the VM identifier, wherein the first VM disk image file represents a first snapshot of the VM that was captured by the first host system;

determining, by a disk change tracker of the first storage system, a difference between the first VM disk image file and a second VM disk image file representing a second snapshot of the VM, wherein the second VM disk image file has been previously backed up from the first storage system to the second storage system; and

transmitting, by the backup logic of the first storage system, the difference between the first and second VM disk image files to the second storage system operating as a target backup storage system directly without going through the backup application server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the persistent storage device stores one or more disk snapshots created at the first storage system based on VM snapshots created by a virtual machine manager (VMM) of the first host system.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising deleting one or more disk snapshots after the difference has been transmitted to the second storage system.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein deletion of the one or more disk snapshots is performed by erasing a VM snapshot initiated by the VMM.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the difference between the first and second VM disk image files is determined based on disk change tracking by the first storage system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the second storage system reconstructs the first VM disk image file based on the transmitted difference and the second VM disk image file.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first storage system is a deduplicating storage system.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the second storage system is a proxy server.

16. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the second storage system is a proxy server.

9. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations to back up virtual machines, the operations comprising:

receiving a request at a first storage system for an incremental backup of a virtual machine (VM) from a backup application server over a network, the request including a VM identifier identifying the VM to be backed up from the first storage system to a second storage system, wherein the VM is hosted by a first host system communicatively coupled to the first storage system over a storage network, wherein the backups application server is a separate server configured to manage backups of a plurality of storage systems, including the first storage system and the second storage system;

in response to the request, identifying by backup logic of the first storage system a first VM disk image file from a persistent storage device of the first storage system based on the VM identifier, wherein the first VM disk image file represents a first snapshot of the VM that was captured by the first host system;

determining, by a disk change tracker of the first storage system, a difference between the first VM disk image file and a second VM disk image file representing a second snapshot of the VM, wherein the second VM disk image file has been previously backed up from the first storage system to the second storage system; and

transmitting, by the backup logic of the first storage system, the difference between the first and second VM disk image files to the second storage system operating as a target backup storage system directly without going through the backup application server.

10. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the persistent storage device stores one or more disk snapshots created at the first storage system based on VM snapshots created by a virtual machine manager (VMM) of the first host system.

11. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise deleting one or more disk snapshots after the difference has been transmitted to the second storage system.

12. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 11, wherein deletion of the one or more disk snapshots is performed by erasing a VM snapshot initiated by the VMM.

13. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the difference between the first and second VM disk image files is determined based on disk change tracking by the first storage system.

14. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the second storage system reconstructs the first VM disk image file based on the transmitted difference and the second VM disk image file.

15. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the first storage system is a deduplicating storage system.

17. A storage system, comprising:

a processor;

a persistent storage device coupled to the processor;

backup logic coupled to the persistent storage device and processor to

receive a request at the storage system operating as a first storage system for an incremental backup of a virtual machine (VM) from a backup application server over a network, the request including a VM identifier identifying the VM to be backed up to a second storage system, wherein the VM is hosted by a first host system communicatively coupled to the storage system over a storage network, wherein the backup application serer is a separate server configured to manage backups of a plurality of storage systems, including the first storage system and the second storage system,

in response to the request, identify a first VM disk image file from the persistent storage device based on the VM identifier, wherein the first VM disk image file represents a first snapshot of the VM that was captured by the first host system,

determine a difference between the first VM disk image file and a second VM disk image file representing a second snapshot of the VM, wherein the second VM disk image file has been previously backed up from the first storage system to the second storage system; and

transmit the difference between the first and second VM disk image files to the second storage system operating as a target backup storage system directly without going through the backup application server.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the persistent storage device stores one or more disk snapshots created at the first storage system based on VM snapshots created by a virtual machine manager (VMM) of the first host system.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the backup logic is to delete one or more disk snapshots after the difference has been transmitted to the second storage system.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein deletion of the one or more disk snapshots is performed by erasing a VM snapshot initiated by the VMM.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the difference between the first and second VM disk image files is determined based on disk change tracking by the first storage system.

22. The system of claim 17, wherein the second storage system reconstructs the first VM disk image file based on the transmitted difference and the second VM disk image file.

23. The system of claim 17, wherein the first storage system is a deduplicating storage system.

24. The system of claim 17, wherein the second storage system is a proxy server.