Invented by Paramasivam Kumarasamy, Amit Mitkar, Sumedh Pramod DEGAONKAR, Commvault Systems Inc

In today’s fast-paced world, technology is constantly evolving, and so are the needs of businesses and individuals. With the increasing demand for customized solutions, the market for creating a custom bootable image from an older image, such as a backup copy, for client computing devices has grown significantly. A custom bootable image is a pre-configured operating system that is designed to meet specific requirements of a client. It is created by taking an older image, such as a backup copy, and modifying it to include the necessary software, drivers, and settings required for the client’s computing devices. This saves time and effort as the client does not have to manually install and configure the operating system and software on each device. The market for creating custom bootable images has grown due to the increasing demand for personalized solutions. Businesses and individuals require customized solutions that meet their specific needs and requirements. A custom bootable image provides a cost-effective and efficient solution for clients who need to deploy multiple devices with the same configuration. The market for creating custom bootable images is not limited to a specific industry or sector. It is applicable to any business or individual who requires a customized solution for their computing devices. This includes small businesses, educational institutions, healthcare organizations, and government agencies. The process of creating a custom bootable image involves several steps. First, the client’s requirements are analyzed, and the necessary software, drivers, and settings are identified. Next, the older image is modified to include the required components. Finally, the custom bootable image is tested to ensure that it works seamlessly on the client’s computing devices. The market for creating custom bootable images is expected to grow in the coming years as businesses and individuals continue to demand personalized solutions. The increasing use of cloud computing and virtualization technologies is also expected to drive the market as clients require customized solutions that can be deployed on virtual machines. In conclusion, the market for creating custom bootable images from older images, such as backup copies, for client computing devices is growing rapidly. It provides a cost-effective and efficient solution for clients who need to deploy multiple devices with the same configuration. The market is expected to grow in the coming years as businesses and individuals continue to demand personalized solutions.

The Commvault Systems Inc invention works as follows

According to certain aspects, the method for creating customized bootable images of client computing devices within an information management system includes: creating a backup copy, which can be used to restore the client computing devices to their original state; creating a customized image that is designed to directly restore the client computing devices to their initial state; adding one or more drivers to hardware at the time of restore; and finally, rebooting the client computing devices to the custom bootable picture.

Background for Creating a custom bootable image from an older image, such as a backup copy, for a client computing devices

Global businesses recognize the commercial value and seek cost-effective, reliable ways to secure their information while minimizing productivity. Information protection is often part and parcel of an organizational process.

A company may back up important computing systems like web servers, file servers, web server, etc. as part of its daily, weekly or monthly maintenance plan. A company might also protect the computing systems of each employee, such as those used in an accounting, marketing, or engineering department.

Companies continue to look for innovative ways to manage data growth and protect data, given the ever-growing volume of data under their control. Companies often use migration techniques to move data to cheaper storage and data reduction techniques to reduce redundant data, prune lower priority data, and so forth.

Enterprises increasingly see their stored data as an asset. Customers are seeking solutions that can not only manage and protect their data but also allow them to leverage it. Solutions that provide data analysis capabilities, information management and improved data presentation and accessibility features are increasingly in demand.

A backup image of the Linux machine can be used to reboot a Linux machine at a specific point in time. It can be booted from a DVD or generic image that contains standard kernel and drivers. The system state at that time can then be accessed from the backup image and restored. The kernel, drivers, and other information can be included in the system state. The system state can contain the kernel, drivers, etc. and the machine can then be rebooted using the kernel on the generic dvd. The command kexec can be used to reboot the machine into the kernel it needs at a particular time. This is sometimes referred to as a “two-step reboot.” Or a?two-step approach? In some cases, however, the two-step approach may not be ideal. You may have to use kexec to reboot from the kernel after you’ve booted from the generic kernel. This is because it might not work with certain hypervisors, or systems that use Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces (UEFI).

In order address these and other issues, an information management system according certain aspects can implement single-step restart approaches, which may include a customized bootable or DVD image from which a Linux computer can be rebooted at a specific point in time. A customized bootable image can also be created during restore using the backup image and the generic image. The system state at that particular time can be included in the customized bootable image. This system state could include kernel, drivers, and internal settings. The machine. This customized bootable image can contain all necessary information to reboot a Linux machine at a particular time and in one step. This approach may be referred to as the ?one-step/single-step reboot? or ?one-step/single-step approach.?

This allows system to provide a quick and easy way for a client to reboot by creating a custom bootable image during restore. Instead of having to first boot from the default bootable image and then reboot with kexec to the client’s kernel at the time, the client can be restored from the customized bootable images. The customized bootable image can also be created on-the-fly based on the time the client needs to be restored.

Some embodiments provide a method for creating custom bootable images for client computers using an information management system. This may include creating backup copies of all client computing devices. The backup copy includes an image of the client computing device in its current state. After creating backup copies of all of the client computing devices, the method can also be used to receive a request to restore the client computing device to its original state. After receiving a request, the method may also include creating a customized bootable file that can be used to restore the first client’s computing device to its original state. The customized bootable image could include the specific system state for the first client computing devices at the time. A customized bootable image could also include drivers that are associated with hardware present at the time of restore on a computing devices to be rebooted into the state of the first client computing devices at the first time. This method may also include using one or more computers that are comprised of computer hardware to reboot the computing device to the initial state from the customized bootable images for the first client.

Accordingly to other embodiments, the system can be configured to create custom bootable images for client computing device in an information management software. A computing system may include one or more computers that are comprised of computer hardware. A backup copy may be created by the computing system for each of the plurality client computing devices. The backup copy includes an image of the client computing device in its current state. After creating the backup copies of all the plurality client computing devices, the computing system may be contacted to restore the client computing device to its original state. After receiving the request, the computing system may create a customized bootable file that can be used to restore the first client’s computing device to its original state. The customized bootable image may include the specific system state for the first client computing device. A customized bootable image may also include drivers that are associated with hardware present at the time of restore. This allows the computing device to be reset to the original state. A customized bootable image can be used to reboot the client computing devices.

For the purposes of summarizing disclosure, certain aspects and novel features of inventions have been described in this document. You should understand that not all of these advantages can be achieved according to any particular embodiment. The invention can be implemented or performed in a way that maximizes one advantage or group if advantages are taught or suggested herein.

Systems and Methods are described in this document for creating bootable images for client computing device from backup copy. These systems and methods can be further described herein, including with regard to FIGS. 2-5. It will also be appreciated that information management systems, such as the ones described in FIGS., may be used to create bootable images for client computers from backup copies. 1A-1H. As will be explained, the components for creating bootable images for clients computing devices can be integrated into such systems.

Information Management System Overview

Organizations simply cannot afford to lose critical data. This is because of the growing importance of protecting and leveraging data. Protecting and managing data is becoming more difficult due to runaway data growth and other modern realities. It is imperative to have user-friendly, efficient and powerful solutions for managing and protecting data.

Depending on the organization’s size, there may be many data production sources that fall under the control of thousands, hundreds or even thousands of employees. Individual employees used to be responsible for protecting and managing their data in the past. In other cases, a patchwork of software and hardware point solutions was used. These solutions were often offered by different vendors, and sometimes had little or no interoperability.

CERTAIN embodiments described herein offer systems and methods capable to address these and other shortcomings in prior approaches by implementing unified information management across the organization. FIG. FIG. 1A illustrates one such information management systems 100. It generally includes combinations hardware and software that are used to manage and protect data and metadata generated by various computing devices within information management system 100. An organization using the information management system 100 could be a company, other business entity, educational institution, household or governmental agency.

Generally, the systems described herein may be compatible and/or provide some of the functionality of one or more U.S patents or patent application publications assigned by CommVault Systems, Inc., each which is hereby incorporated into its entirety by reference herein.

The information management software 100 can contain a wide range of computing devices. As an example, the information management software 100 could include one or more client computing device 102 and secondary storage computing device 106, as we will discuss in more detail.

Computer devices may include without limitation one or more of the following: personal computers, workstations, desktop computers or other types generally fixed computing systems like mainframe computers or minicomputers. Other computing devices include portable or mobile computing devices like laptops, tablets computers, personal information assistants, mobile phones (such a smartphones), and other mobile/portable computing devices like embedded computers, set top boxes or vehicle-mounted devices. Servers can be included in computing devices, including mail servers, file server, database servers and web servers.

In certain cases, a computing device may include virtualized and/or Cloud computing resources. A third-party cloud service provider may provide one or more virtual machines to an organization. In some cases, computing devices may include one or more virtual machines running on a physical host computing device (or “host machine?”). The organization may use one or more virtual machines to run its database server and another virtual machine as a mail server. One example is that the organization might use one virtual machine to run its database server and another as a mail server. Both virtual machines are running on the same host computer.

A virtual machine is an operating system and associated resources that is hosted on a host computer or host machine. Hypervisor is typically software and is also known as a virtual monitor, virtual machine manager or?VMM? The hypervisor acts as a bridge between the virtual machine’s hardware and its host machine. ESX Server, by VMware, Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., is an example of hypervisor used for virtualization. Other examples include Microsoft Virtual Server, Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V, and Sun xVM, both by Oracle America Inc., Santa Clara, Calif. In some embodiments, hypervisors may be hardware or firmware.

The hypervisor gives each virtual operating system virtual resources such as a processor, virtual memory, and virtual network devices. Each virtual machine can have one or more virtual drives. The data of virtual drives is stored by the hypervisor in files on the filesystem of the physical host machine. These files are called virtual machine disk images (in the instance of Microsoft virtual servers) and virtual machine disk files (in case of VMware virtual server). VMware’s ESX server provides the Virtual Machine File System, (VMFS), for storage of virtual machine files. Virtual machines read and write data to their virtual disks in the same manner as physical machines.

Click here to view the patent on Google Patents.