Ca, Inc.

Arcserve (usa) LLC

Chuanqi Sun

Zhiye Wang

Yu Lu

A system and method are presented that reduce the use of snapshot space. One embodiment of the present invention only performs snapshot copies for blocks on the source volume that have not yet been backed up. Another embodiment stores the data in the snapshot space in multiple files, and then deletes those files that contain data whose corresponding blocks have been backed up. A third embodiment stores the data in the snapshot space directly onto a dedicated device and then reuses the data blocks for data already backed up when the dedicated device is full.

Snapshot space reduction method and apparatus

Performing a file backup includes receiving a file to backup from a source machine and performing a write operation to write the file to a mount point in a file system on a backup server. The backup also includes intercepting a block-level data block to be written which is generated by the write operation; and writing the block-level data block to a corresponding, respective block of a disk image file having a plurality of blocks.

Backup files to a disk image

Performing a snapshot backup includes initiating, by a snapshot driver, a snapshot of at least a portion of a filesystem; and receiving, by the snapshot driver, a filesystem bitmap from a backup agent. Subsequently, the snapshot driver performs copy-on-write operations based on the filesystem bitmap.

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Beijing, China

Chuanqi Sun