System and method for rapid restoration of server from back up

1. A method of restoring a storage device, the method comprising:

creating an image of the storage device of a server;

during execution of a boot loader, starting an initialization application that partially restores, to the storage device, operating system data from the image;

modifying a disk driver of the operating system to redirect unexecutable storage device read requests to the image;

as a first restoration step, rebooting the computer system using the partially restored operating system data; and

as a second restoration step, restoring unaltered portions of remaining data from the image as an asynchronous background process, wherein the background process comprises copying data from a virtual hard disk drive to a local hard disk drive.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the restored server identification and authentication data is updated before the rebooting.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the image is unchanged until completion of the restoring steps.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein data corresponding to write requests to the image is backed up during the restoring steps.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein one partition of the storage device is used as the storage device while another partition of the storage device is used as a boot device.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the restoring is performed over a network.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the image is created on at least one sewer connected to a network.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the restoration of the unaltered portions of remaining data based on a preassigned priority of blocks of the image.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the priority is preassigned based on performance of reading blocks from an image storage device.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising creating a bitmap corresponding to blocks of the image, with unrestored blocks marked in the bitmap.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising at least one of unmarking, in the bitmap, blocks being updated after a local drive write request execution and unmarking, in the bitmap, the blocks being restored.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the modified driver considers the storage device read request as unexecutable if corresponding block has been marked in the bitmap.

13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising restoring the disk driver after all the blocks have been unmarked in the bitmap, the disk driver servicing all local drive access requests.

14. The method of claim 1 , further comprising restoring more than one storage device from the image.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein data transmission during the background process is executed as a low priority process.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the restoration process also employs an incremental image of the storage device.

17. A method of restoring a storage device of a server, the method comprising:

creating an image of the storage device;

during execution of a boot loader, starting an initialization application that partially restores to the storage device, operating system data from the image;

modifying a disk driver of the operating system to redirect unexecutable storage device read requests to the image;

copying portions of data needed for operation of the server operation from the image to the server on an on-demand basis,

as a first restoration step, restoring parts of the storage device corresponding to the data from the image; and

as a second restoration step, restoring remaining data of the storage device from the image as an asynchronous background process,

wherein the background process comprises copying data from a virtual hard disk drive to a local hard disk drive.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the image is created on at least one server connected to a network.

19. The method of claim 17 , further comprising saving updated sectors as an incremental backup.

20. A method of restoring a storage device, comprising:

booting up a server, including replacing a Master Boot Record and launching a dedicated driver that redirects unexecutable storage device read requests to a previously created image of the storage device;

copying, from the image to the server, a portion of the image;

as a first restoration step, restoring portions of the storage device corresponding to the portion of the image; and

as a second restoration step, restoring unaltered portions of remaining data of the storage device from the image as an asynchronous background process,

wherein the background process comprises copying data from a virtual hard disk drive to a local hard disk drive.

21. A method of restoring a storage device, the method comprising:

creating an image of the storage device of a server;

during execution of a boot loader, starting an initialization application that partially restores, to the storage device, operating system data from the image;

adding, to a disk driver of the operating system, a disk level filter that intercepts unexecutable storage device read requests and redirects them to the image;

as a first restoration step, rebooting the computer system using the partially restored operating system data; and

as a second restoration step, restoring unaltered portions of remaining data from the image as an asynchronous background process,

wherein the background process comprises copying data from a virtual hard disk drive to a local hard disk drive.