De-duplicated file share mounting for granular level data recoveries

1. A method for granularly restoring data from a backup from a target client, the method comprising:

generating an image level backup of a virtual machine from within a parent partition without generating a backup from within the virtual machine for file-level recovery, wherein the image level backup is read only and is stored on a storage device;

exposing the image level backup by a backup client and presenting the image level backup in a user interface such that virtual hard disks included in the image level backup are browsable;

selecting a virtual hard disk from the image level backup through the user interface, wherein the selected virtual hard disk contains pointers or offsets that are included in the image level backup for identifying locations of files;

mounting the selected virtual hard disk in the virtual machine, wherein the mounting the selected virtual hard disk includes performing write operations to establish a mount point and bring the selected virtual hard disk to a transactionally consistent state, wherein the mounting the selected virtual hard disk further includes performing writes to combine one or more differencing virtual hard disks with the selected virtual hard disk;

mounting a file system volume on the selected virtual hard disk, wherein the selected virtual hard disk is writable and deduplicated;

browsing the files included in the selected virtual hard disk through the user interface;

selecting specific files from the selected virtual hard disk to recover through the user interface;

in response to the selection of the specific files in the selected virtual hard disk mounted on a target device, reading the selected specific files from the image level backup, wherein at least one selected image level backup of the selected specific files is-deduplicated;

retrieving the selected specific files from the image level backup; and

directly recovering the specific files from the selected virtual hard disk to the target client; and

reading and writing to the selected virtual hard disk at the target client when recovering the specific files without affecting an integrity of the image level backup.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein exposing the image level backup includes providing the user interface and browsing backups including the image level backup through the user interface.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein exposing the image level backup includes accessing the image-level backup of a virtual machine.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein mounting the selected virtual hard disk includes writing data read from the image level backup to mount the selected virtual hard disk, wherein mounting the selected virtual hard disk further includes mounting and applying one or more differencing virtual hard disks to the selected virtual hard disk.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising mounting a file system fully or sparsely.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein in response to a selection of a file in the selected virtual hard disk mounted on the target device, reading the selected file from the image level backup, wherein the selected image level backup is de-duplicated.

7. A method for granularly restoring files from a backup of the files from a target node, the method comprising:

generating an image level backup of a virtual machine from within a parent partition without generating a backup from within the virtual machine for file-level recovery, wherein the image level backup is read only and is stored on a storage device;

presenting a user interface to a user on a display associated with the target node, wherein the user interface is configured to receive input from the user;

exposing the image level backup on the target node and displaying the image level backup on the user interface such that the image level backup is browsable, wherein the image level backup includes one or more virtual hard disks and each virtual hard disk includes one or more files;

selecting a virtual hard disk from the image level backup displayed in the user interface, wherein the selected virtual hard disk contains a pointer or offset that is included in the image level backup for identifying a location of the file;

mounting the selected virtual hard disk in a virtual machine, wherein the mounting the selected virtual hard disk includes performing write operations to establish a mount point to bring the selected virtual hard disk to a transactionally consistent state, wherein the mounting the selected virtual hard disk further includes performing writes to combine one or more differencing virtual hard disks with the elected virtual hard disk;

mounting a local file system in the selected virtual hard disk on the target node;

accessing the selected virtual hard disk using the local file system of the target node;

browsing the selected virtual hard disk through the user interface;

selecting specific files from the selected virtual hard disk to restore through the user interface;

in response to the selection of the specific files in the selected virtual hard disk mounted on the target node, reading the selected specific files from the image level backup, wherein at least one selected image level backup of the selected specific files is de-duplicated;

retrieving the selected specific files directly from the image level backup;

and restoring the selected specific files retrieved from the image level backup to the target node.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein accessing an image level backup in response to the input includes exposing the image level backup for viewing, wherein mounting the selected virtual hard disk on a node includes mounting the selected virtual hard disk in a virtual file system.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein mounting the local file system includes sparsely mounting the local file system on the virtual machine or a physical server.

10. The method of claim 7 , wherein mounting the selected virtual hard disk further includes mounting one or more differencing virtual hard disks associated with the selected virtual hard disk on the target node.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein restoring at least one file includes reading the at least one file from the image level backup and storing the at least one file on the selected virtual hard disk on the target node, wherein the selected virtual hard disk is a sparse file and the at least one file is a sparse file.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the at least one file is de-duplicated and is stored in the selected virtual hard disk included in the image level backup, wherein a pointer or offset in the selected virtual hard disk included in the image level backup identifies a location of the at least one file.

13. The method of claim 7 , wherein the selected virtual hard disk and the file system support read and write operations while being restored.

14. A non-transitory computer readable storage comprising computer readable instructions that when performed by a processor perform operations comprising:

generating an image level backup of a virtual machine from within a parent partition without generating a backup from within the virtual machine for file-level recovery, wherein the image level backup is read only and is stored on a storage device;

presenting a user interface to a user on a display associated with a target node, wherein the user interface is configured to receive input from the user;

exposing the image level backup on the target node and displaying the image level backup on the user interface such that the image level backup is browsable, wherein the image level backup includes one or more virtual hard disks and each virtual hard disk includes one or more files;

selecting a virtual hard disk from the image level backup displayed in the user interface, wherein the selected virtual hard disk contains a pointer or offset that is included in the image level backup for identifying a location of the file;

mounting the selected virtual hard disk in a virtual machine, wherein the mounting the selected virtual hard disk includes performing write operations to establish a mount point to bring the selected virtual hard disk to a transactionally consistent state, wherein the mounting the selected virtual hard disk further includes performing writes to combine one or more differencing virtual hard disks with the selected virtual hard disk;

mounting a local file system in the selected virtual hard disk on the target node;

accessing the selected virtual hard disk using the local file system of the target node;

browsing the selected virtual hard disk through the user interface;

selecting specific files from the selected virtual hard disk to restore through the user interface;

in response to the selection of the specific files in the selected virtual hard disk mounted on the target device, reading the selected specific files from the image level backup, wherein at least one selected image level backup of the selected specific files is de-duplicated;

retrieving the selected specific files directly from the image level backup;

and restoring the selected specific files retrieved from the image level backup to the target node.

15. The non-transitory computer readable storage of claim 14 , the operations further comprising restoring the selected virtual hard disk to a transactionally consistent state on the target node and sparsely mounting the file system on the virtual hard disk at the target node.

16. The non-transitory computer readable storage of claim 14 , wherein the selected virtual hard disk that has been established on the target node and the local file system that has been mounted on the selected virtual hard disk supports read and write operations, wherein write operations are performed to mount the local file system on the virtual hard disk at the target node, further comprising mounting multiple virtual hard disks on the target node from the image level backup and mounting the local file system on the multiple virtual hard disks.