System and method for high performance enterprise data protection

A method for making a backup copy of a primary system, that is mountable on the same or other computer system on an immediately available basis, and for providing an immediately available restoration of said backup copy to a restoration system, and restoring to the restoration system a primary storage device capable of aggregating changes as well as retaining original unchanged data from a read-only backup image, comprising:

• providing a base-level snapshot, stored on a secondary system, of the primary system;
• providing block-level incremental snapshots of the primary system, stored on the secondary system, representing only the blocks that have changed since the prior snapshot, wherein the base-level and block-level incremental snapshots of the primary system further comprise application-specific metadata;
• constructing a read-only logical disk image from at least one of said snapshot images;
• exposing the read-only logical disk image as a LUN containing both backup data and application-specific metadata;
• mapping the restore volume to the local namespace of the restoration system;
• mounting the restore volume on the restoration system;
• and
• using the LUN as primary storage.

A method for making a backup copy of a primary system, that is mountable on the same or other computer system on an immediately available basis, and for restoring a backup copy in operations under a virtualization server, on a virtual machine running on said server, comprising:

• providing a base-level snapshot, stored on a secondary system, of the primary system;
• providing block-level incremental snapshots of the primary system, stored on the secondary system, representing only the blocks that have changed since the prior snapshot;
• constructing a logical disk image from at least one of said snapshot images that can be used as a mounted storage unit;
• exposing the logical disk image as a LUN to create a restore volume;
• and
• mapping the restore volume to the local namespace of the virtual machine.

A method for rapidly performing a restore operation on an application on a target node, from a set of one or more backup images, for use in the case of recovery from a failure, comprising

• selecting said backup images;
• creating addressable virtual storage LUNs from said images on an on-demand basis;
• making the LUNs visible to the target node;
• attaching the LUNs as local disks on the restore target via iSCSI protocols;
• programmatically recovering the application using appropriate application-specific APIs;
• and
• applying application-specific log files to roll said restore operation forward to the point of failure.