Invented by Ashwin Gautamchand Sancheti, Henry Wallace Dornemann, Commvault Systems Inc

The market for targeted backup of virtual machines has seen significant growth in recent years. As more businesses rely on virtualization technology to streamline their operations, the need for efficient and reliable backup solutions has become paramount. Virtual machines (VMs) are software emulations of physical computers that can run multiple operating systems and applications simultaneously. They offer numerous benefits, such as cost savings, improved flexibility, and increased scalability. However, they also present unique challenges when it comes to data protection and disaster recovery. Traditional backup solutions designed for physical servers are often not suitable for VMs. The dynamic nature of virtual environments, with VMs being created, deleted, and migrated across hosts, requires backup solutions that can adapt to these changes. Additionally, the sheer volume of data generated by VMs can overwhelm traditional backup systems, leading to performance issues and increased backup windows. Targeted backup solutions specifically designed for virtual machines address these challenges. They leverage the capabilities of virtualization platforms, such as VMware or Hyper-V, to provide efficient and streamlined backup processes. These solutions take advantage of features like snapshotting, deduplication, and incremental backups to minimize the amount of data transferred and stored, reducing backup windows and storage requirements. One of the key advantages of targeted backup solutions is their ability to perform granular backups and restores. Unlike traditional backups that treat VMs as black boxes, targeted backup solutions can back up individual files, folders, or even specific applications within a VM. This level of granularity allows for faster recovery times and minimizes the impact on production systems. Another important feature of targeted backup solutions is their ability to integrate with virtualization management tools. This integration enables administrators to centrally manage and monitor backup processes, schedule backups based on VM attributes, and automate recovery workflows. This level of automation not only reduces the administrative burden but also ensures that backups are performed consistently and according to established policies. The market for targeted backup of virtual machines is expected to continue growing as more businesses adopt virtualization technology. According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global market for virtual machine backup solutions is projected to reach $2.8 billion by 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.8%. The increasing adoption of cloud-based virtualization platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, is also driving the demand for targeted backup solutions. These platforms offer built-in backup capabilities, but businesses often require additional features and flexibility that specialized backup solutions provide. As a result, many vendors offer cloud-native targeted backup solutions that integrate seamlessly with these platforms. In conclusion, the market for targeted backup of virtual machines is witnessing significant growth due to the increasing adoption of virtualization technology. These solutions offer efficient and reliable backup processes, granular recovery options, and integration with virtualization management tools. As businesses continue to rely on virtualization for their IT infrastructure, targeted backup solutions will play a crucial role in ensuring data protection and disaster recovery.

The Commvault Systems Inc invention works as follows

A data storage environment may include one or multiple virtual machines that are instantiated on the host computing device. Storage manager can control secondary copy operations on one or multiple storage units that contain virtual machine data for the virtual machines.

Background for Targeted Backup of Virtual Machine

Businesses recognize the commercial value and look for cost-effective, reliable ways to safeguard the data stored on their computers networks. This will minimize the impact on productivity. As part of its daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance program, a company may back up important computing systems like databases, file servers or web servers. A company might also protect the computing systems of its employees, such those used by marketing departments, accounting departments, engineering departments, and so on. Companies continue to look for innovative ways to manage data growth due to the ever-growing volume of data under their control. This includes migrating data to cheaper storage over time, reducing redundant information, pruning lower priority data, and so on. Companies increasingly see their stored data as an asset and seek solutions to leverage it. Data analysis, information management, enhanced data presentation and access, and other such capabilities are becoming more in demand.

Virtualized computing devices are increasingly used by companies to manipulate and display data that is always changing. In computing, the term virtualization can refer to creating a virtual version of an entity, such as a platform, operating system or storage device. That behaves as a physical instance. A virtual machine, for example, can be a representation in software of a real machine. Virtualization is used by companies for many purposes. For example, it can be used to reduce the number physical computers or servers. Virtualization is a powerful tool that can help centralize administrative tasks, improve scalability, and increase work load.

The disclosure includes a method of creating a snapshot for a storage unit that is associated with a virtual computer. The method includes: requesting that a host computer perform a virtual device snapshot for every virtual device executing on one or

The method described in the preceding paragraph may include any combination of features. For example, it could perform a secondary storage of at lease one virtual computer of the plurality based on a determined location of specific virtual machine data that corresponds to the at most one virtual computer, with the particular virtual data located within at the least one of identified one or multiple storage units.

Another aspect of the disclosure is a method of creating a snapshot for a storage device associated with a Virtual Machine. The method consists of: receiving location data from a host computer device of at least a virtual machine that is executing on one or multiple processors; identifying storage units in a primary device that contain virtual machine data for the virtual machine, based at the least in part, on the location information; and asking the primary device to create a storage snapshot.

The method described in the preceding paragraph may include sub-combinations of features such as: requesting that the host computer perform a snapshot of at the least one machine; identifying one or more storage devices which store virtual data for the plurality virtual machines; requesting that the host computer perform a snapshot of at the least one machine; requesting to notify the host device of completion of storage unit snapshot and based on this notification, merging virtual data with the pre-snapshot data after the snapshot is performed; and requesting

The disclosure also provides for a data storage solution that includes: a storage management system with one or multiple processors and one or several data stores, a host computing unit with one or two second processors at the core, and one or many virtual machines instantiated on it and running on one or the more second processors.

The data storage system described in the preceding paragraph may include sub-combinations of these features: the storage manger is further configured for the host computer to perform a snapshot of at the least one machine and the storage data is comprised of location data for each of those virtual machines. In addition, the storage management is configured identify one or more storage devices that contain the virtual data corresponding to this plurality; the storage managers is further configured for the host computer to perform a snapshot of at the least one machine and the storage data is comprised

The disclosure also provides a nontransitory computer-readable medium that contains computer-executable instruction sets that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to: Request a host computer device to take a virtual snapshot of at lease one virtual device executing on one or two second processors; Receive from the host computer device location data for the at most one virtual device based, at least, in part, on the performance of the virtual snapshot; Identify one or multiple storage units in a primary device that contain virtual data corresponding to

Another aspect of the disclosure is a method to backup a virtual machine. The method consists of: identifying storage units in a storage array that store a plurality virtual computers, the virtual machines being stored in virtual data stores, and configured to run on one of more processors on a host device. Requesting the storage array to create one of more storage clones of these storage units is also part of this method. Mounting the one of more storage clones on a proxy device is then performed, but the file system is not known to the proxy device.

The method described in the preceding paragraph may include any combination of features, wherein said identifying one or more storage devices is based in at least part on the location data that was received as a result of a snapshot operation performed by the host computer device.

Another aspect of the disclosure is a method to backup a virtual machine. The method consists of: identifying the first storage of a primary device that stores virtual machine information corresponding to virtual machines configured to run on one or multiple processors on a host device, mounting a second unit associated with the initial storage to a proxy device, identifying the physical location of virtual machine info within the mounted secondary storage unit and performing a Secondary Storage operation on selected portions of the mounted secondary storage unit based in part at least on the identified physical locations.

The method described in the preceding paragraph may include sub-combinations of features such as: the first unit being the second unit; the method requesting the primary device to create a storage clone from the first unit; the second unit including the storage clone, the storage clone comprising a physical copy from the storage; the primary device consisting of a storage array; the data received during a virtual machine snapshot operation is used to identify the first unit and the physical location; the file system of

Another aspect of the disclosure is a data-storage system. The data storage system includes: a manager having one or multiple processors and at lease one data store; the manager is communicatively connected to a primary device and to a host device. The host device has one or several second processors with at least a data store and the at least virtual machine. The data storage system also comprises a secondary computing device that is communicatively connected to the proxy computing unit. This secondary computing device is configured to identify the physical location of the copied virtual machine data in the mounted storage clone. It can then perform secondary storage operations on a portion of the mounted clone, based at least partially on the identified location.

The data storage system described in the preceding paragraph may include sub-combinations of these features: the primary device can be a storage array, the storage manager can identify the unit prior to a request based on location data from the virtual machine’s snapshot operation; the secondary computing device will identify the location of a mounted storage unit using data received during a virtual machine snapshot operation; the file system for the mounted storage unit is unknown to proxy computing device.

While virtualization can utilize the underlying computer hardware it can be difficult for individual virtual machines to perform storage operations in an efficient manner. Herein are described systems and methods for performing storage operations on virtual machines. Below, with reference to FIGS. 3-7, we describe further examples of systems for performing a snapshot or a backup of a storage device associated with a virtual machine or virtual machines. 3-7.

The section entitled Targeted Storage Unit Backup and Virtual Machine Back-up, the section entitled Examples, and the FIGS. 3-7 herein. Further, components and functionality to perform storage operations on virtual machine may be configured or incorporated into systems of information management such as those shown in FIGS. “1A-1H” and “2A-2C

Computer technology is integral to the various embodiments described in this document. They would not exist without it. “For example, the virtualization and storage of virtual machines described in various embodiments could not be reasonably performed by humans without computer technology.

Information Management System Overview

Organizations cannot afford to lose critical data due to the importance of protecting and leveraging their data. Protecting and managing data is becoming more difficult due to runaway data growth, and other modern realities. It is imperative to find efficient, powerful and user-friendly ways to manage and protect data as well as smart, efficient storage management. Depending on how large an organization is, there might be multiple data production sources that fall under the control of many individuals. Individuals were responsible for protecting and managing their data in the past. There may have been a variety of software and hardware solutions used within any organization. These solutions were often offered by different vendors and did not have interoperability. These and other limitations are addressed by certain embodiments. They implement scalable, unified information management across the organization, including data storage management.

FIG. “FIG. It generally comprises combinations of hardware, software and hardware that protect and manage metadata and data generated by computing devices in system 100. In some embodiments, System 100 can be called a?storage management software? System 100 may also be referred to as a’storage management system? System 100 performs information management operations. Some of these operations may also be called?storage operations. or data storage operations. To protect and manage data stored in or managed by system 100. System 100 can be used by any organization: a company, other business entity, non profit organization, educational institution or household.

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