Methods and apparatus for providing hypervisor level data services for server virtualization

A system for administering data backup and replication, comprising:

• a journal manager executable on a computing device at a recovery site to replicate data from a protected site to a recovery site in accordance with parameters set via an administrative user interface by:
• intercepting, for a first predetermined window of time set via the administrative user interface, one or more I/O commands sent from a server at the protected site via a network to a disk at a protected site, the I/O commands corresponding to the data to be replicated at the recovery site;
• selecting a variable size storage unit from a pool of variable size storage units to store the data, the variable size storage unit including a variable size data chunk corresponding to a second predetermined window of time;
• and
• storing the data corresponding to the one or more I/O commands in the variable size storage unit.

A method of administering data backup and replication, comprising:

• presenting, by a computing device, an administrative user interface to set parameters for replicating data from a protected site to a recovery site via a journal manager, the journal manager to store the data onto a variable size storage unit in accordance with the parameters, the administrative user interface including:
• a time window setting to set a time window during which the journal manager is to intercept input/output (I/O) commands sent from a server at the protected site via a network to a disk at the protected site, the I/O commands stored as the data onto the variable size storage unit at the recovery site;
• and
• a journal size setting to set a maximum size at which to transfer the data stored on the variable size storage unit to a recover disk at the recovery site.