Tagging writers for incremental backups of system objects

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• and memory configured to store one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to carry out the steps of:
• communicating with a copy service to identify writers that are to participate in the backup;
• generating a mapping between the writers and files associated with the writers, the mapping comprising file properties of the files;
• initializing the mapping by tagging the writers with a full backup tag;
• creating a base backup copy of the writers by conducting a full backup of each writer tagged with the full backup tag;
• upon a current backup operation after creating the base backup copy, generating a list of current files that will participate in the current backup operation;
• comparing the list of current files against the files in the mapping to determine whether a particular writer associated with a current file should be tagged with the full backup tag or an incremental backup tag;
• tagging the particular writer with the incremental backup tag when file properties associated with the current file have changed;
• and
• tagging the particular writer with the full backup tag when file properties associated with the current file have not changed or the current file is not present in the mapping.

A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer-readable program code embodied therein, the computer-readable program code adapted to be executed by one or more processors to implement a method comprising:

• communicating with a copy service to identify writers that are to participate in the backup;
• generating a mapping between the writers and files associated with the writers, the mapping comprising file properties of the files;
• initializing the mapping by tagging the writers with a full backup tag;
• creating a base backup copy of the writers by conducting a full backup of each writer tagged with the full backup tag;
• upon a current backup operation after creating the base backup copy, generating a list of current files that will participate in the current backup operation;
• comparing the list of current files against the files in the mapping to determine whether a particular writer associated with a current file should be tagged with the full backup tag or an incremental backup tag;
• tagging the particular writer with the incremental backup tag when file properties associated with the current file have changed;
• and
• tagging the particular writer with the full backup tag when file properties associated with the current file have not changed or the current file is not present in the mapping.