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

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9348702-B2
Application number	US-201514797033-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 10, 2015
Priority date	Mar 30, 2012
Publication date	May 24, 2016
Grant date	May 24, 2016

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.

First claim

What is claimed is:

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.

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.

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

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 delet

Assignees

• Emc Corp

Inventors

• Hsu Windsor W
• Xing Jian

Classifications

• G06F11/1438 Primary

  Restarting or rejuvenating · CPC title

• G06F11/1479

  Generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking · CPC title

• G06F12/12

  Replacement control · CPC title

• G06F11/1451

  by selection of backup contents · CPC title

• G06F12/08

  in hierarchically structured memory systems, e.g. virtual memory systems · CPC title