Providing and managing data protection by using incremental forever for storage to cloud object stores

A computer system, comprising:

• one or more processors, one or more computer-readable memories and one or more computer-readable, tangible storage devices;
• and
• program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more computer-readable, tangible storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to perform operations comprising:
• determining that it is time for an offload;
• in response to determining that the offload is a full offload, creating a local database in operational recovery storage;
• in response to determining that the offload is an incremental offload, obtaining the local database from the operational recovery storage;
• using one or more extents to identify blocks of data for a version of a virtual machine in the operational recovery storage to be offloaded to a cloud object store, wherein each of the one or more extents identifies locations of the blocks of data;
• converting the blocks of data to objects for the version in an incremental forever data format;
• offloading the objects to the cloud object store;
• storing details of the offloading of the objects in the local database in the operational recovery storage;
• and
• copying the local database from the operational recovery storage to the cloud object store as a database copy.

A computer-implemented method, comprising operations for:

• determining that it is time for an offload;
• in response to determining that the offload is a full offload, creating a local database in operational recovery storage;
• in response to determining that the offload is an incremental offload, obtaining the local database from the operational recovery storage;
• using one or more extents to identify blocks of data for a version of a virtual machine in the operational recovery storage to be offloaded to a cloud object store, wherein each of the one or more extents identifies locations of the blocks of data;
• converting the blocks of data to objects for the version in an incremental forever data format;
• offloading the objects to the cloud object store;
• storing details of the offloading of the objects in the local database in the operational recovery storage;
• and
• copying the local database from the operational recovery storage to the cloud object store as a database copy.