Synthesizing virtual machine disk backups

• US 9,389,800 B1
• Filed: 03/27/2014
• Issued: 07/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/27/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Emc IP Holding Company LLC (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Panidis, Anestis, Natanzon, Assaf, Cohen, Saar
• Primary Examiner(s): Bataille, Pierre-Michel
• Application Number:
  US14/227,208
• Time in Patent Office: 838 Days
• Field of Search: 711/170, 711/173, 711/114
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0617 in relation to availability
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0641 De-duplication techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0665 at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD

Abstract

The system, process, and methods herein describe a mechanism for extracting virtual machine disk backups from LUN backups. The virtual machine disk backups may be stored in a deduplicated storage system. Thick virtual machine disks may be converted to thin virtual machine disks.

Claims

1. A method for backing up virtual disks to deduplicated storage, the method comprising:

receiving a LUN backup from a source storage system at a deduplicated storage system, wherein the LUN backup comprises a LUN containing a virtual disk;

identifying the virtual disk in the LUN backup at the deduplicated storage system;

extracting the virtual disk from the LUN backup at the deduplicated storage system;

converting the virtual disk at the deduplicated storage system from a thick virtual disk to a thin virtual disk having a variable size; and

storing the thin virtual disk as a backup on the deduplicated storage system.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising mounting the LUN inside the deduplicated storage.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein identifying the virtual disk further comprises parsing a LUN file system inside the mounted LUN.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the LUN file system is parsed by the deduplicated storage.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the LUN file system is parsed by the data protection system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein extracting the virtual disk comprises synthesizing a copy of the virtual disk on the deduplicated storage.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising deleting the LUN backup from the deduplicated storage after the virtual disk is extracted.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein converting the virtual disk further comprises:

traversing the thick virtual disk;

identifying locations in the thick virtual disk comprising data; and

synthesizing the thin virtual disk by creating pointers to the locations.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual disk is converted only when data utilization on the thick virtual disk is less than a threshold.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein a user configuration specifies whether to convert the virtual disk.

11. A system for backing up virtual disks to deduplicated storage, the system comprising a computer processor configured to execute instructions comprising:

receiving a LUN backup from a source storage system at a deduplicated storage system, wherein the LUN backup comprises a LUN containing a virtual disk;

identifying the virtual disk in the LUN backup at the deduplicated storage system;

extracting the virtual disk from the LUN backup at the deduplicated storage system;

converting the virtual disk at the deduplicated storage system from a thick virtual disk to a thin virtual disk having a variable size; and

storing the thin virtual disk as a backup on the deduplicated storage system.

12. The computer program product of claim 11, further comprising mounting the LUN inside the deduplicated storage.

13. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein identifying the virtual disk further comprises parsing a LUN file system inside the mounted LUN.

14. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein extracting the virtual disk comprises synthesizing a copy of the virtual disk on the deduplicated storage.

15. A computer program product for backing up virtual disks to deduplicated storage, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with computer executable program, the code enabling:

receiving a LUN backup from a source storage system at a deduplicated storage system, wherein the LUN backup comprises a LUN containing a virtual disk;

identifying the virtual disk in the LUN backup at the deduplicated storage system;

extracting the virtual disk from the LUN backup at the deduplicated storage system;

converting the virtual disk at the deduplicated storage system from a thick virtual disk to a thin virtual disk having a variable size; and

storing the thin virtual disk as a backup on the deduplicated storage system.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, further comprising mounting the LUN inside the deduplicated storage.

17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein identifying the virtual disk further comprises parsing a LUN file system inside the mounted LUN.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein extracting the virtual disk comprises synthesizing a copy of the virtual disk on the deduplicated storage.