Virtual machine image backup to exclude system page file

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

• in response to a request to back up a virtual machine to a backup storage system, generating a snapshot of the virtual machine;
• identifying one or more unessential files within the snapshot the unessential files being unessential for restoration purposes and comprise temporary files and system page file, wherein a size of the system page file changes dynamically depending on virtual machine memory usages;
• if the one or more unessential files are identified, backing up dynamically a modified representation of the snapshot by,
• analyzing the snapshot to determine addresses of the identified one or more unessential files within the snapshot;
• and
• substituting content of the identified one or more unessential files at the addresses with a data pattern of repeated predetermined data segments;
• deduplicating the modified representation of the snapshot to remove the repeated data segments such that only one copy of one of the repeated data segments will be sent to the backup storage system, only once;
• and
• copying data segments of the deduplicated modified representation of the snapshot to the backup storage system such that data segments to be backed up to the backup storage system are minimized;
• wherein substituting the content of the identified one or more files with the data pattern of predetermined data segments comprises:
• determining a granule size of the data pattern;
• allocating memory having the granule size;
• writing the predetermined data segments to the allocated memory;
• and
• substituting content of the identified one or more files with repeated sequence of the allocated memory data;
• and wherein the predetermined data segment is a non-zero data pattern such that the non-zero predetermined data pattern of the modified representation of the snapshot when restored are allocated identical files sizes as the identified one or more files.

A data processing system, comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor to store instructions, which when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations, the operations including
• in response to a request to back up a virtual machine to a backup storage system, generating a snapshot of the virtual machine;
• identifying one or more unessential files within the snapshot the unessential files being unessential for restoration purposes and comprise temporary files and system page file, wherein a size of the system page file changes dynamically depending on virtual machine memory usages;
• if the one or more unessential files are identified, backing up dynamically a modified representation of the snapshot by,
• analyzing the snapshot to determine addresses of the identified one or more unessential files within the snapshot;
• and
• substituting content of the identified one or more unessential files at the addresses with a data pattern of repeated predetermined data segments;
• deduplicating the modified representation of the snapshot to remove the repeated data segments such that only one copy of one of the repeated data segments will be sent to the backup storage system, only once;
• and
• copying data segments of the deduplicated modified representation of the snapshot to the backup storage system such that data segments to be backed up to the backup storage system are minimized;
• wherein substituting the content of the identified one or more files with the data pattern of predetermined data segments comprises:
• determining a granule size of the data pattern;
• allocating memory having the granule size;
• writing the predetermined data segments to the allocated memory;
• and
• substituting content of the identified one or more files with repeated sequence of the allocated memory data;
• and wherein the predetermined data segment is a non-zero data pattern such that the non-zero predetermined data pattern of the modified representation of the snapshot when restored are allocated identical files sizes as the identified one or more files.