PRUNING UNWANTED FILE CONTENT FROM AN IMAGE BACKUP

1 . A method of pruning unwanted file content from an image backup, the method comprising:

identifying files to be excluded from a base image backup of a source storage;

identifying a set of allocated blocks in the source storage at a first point in time;

pruning the set of allocated blocks to exclude the allocated blocks that correspond to content of the files to be excluded;

backing up the pruned set of allocated blocks, and not backing up the excluded allocated blocks, in the base image backup; and

restoring the base image backup to a restore storage, the restoring including pruning file system metadata of a file system of the restore storage prior to exposing the file system to any user such that the files to be excluded are no longer listed as existing within the file system metadata.

2 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the identifying the files to be excluded includes:

identifying files on the source storage at the first point in time that correspond to a file exclusion policy; and

associating the file exclusion policy with the base image backup.

3 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the identifying the files to be excluded includes:

identifying a user-specified list of excluded files; and

associating the user-specified list of excluded files with the base image backup.

4 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the identifying the files to be excluded includes:

identifying files on the source storage at the first point in time that do not correspond to a file inclusion policy; and

associating the file inclusion policy with the base image backup.

5 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the identifying the files to be excluded includes:

identifying files on the source storage at the first point in time that do not correspond to a user-specified list of included files; and

associating the user-specified list of included files with the base image backup.

6 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the restore storage is the same storage as the source storage.

7 . The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the restore storage is a virtual volume and the restoring the base image backup to the restore storage includes mounting the base image backup as the virtual volume.

8 . The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising:

identifying files to be excluded from an incremental image backup of the source storage;

identifying a set of changed allocated blocks that changed in the source storage between the first point in time and a second point in time;

pruning the set of changed allocated blocks to exclude the allocated blocks that correspond to content of the files to be excluded; and

backing up the pruned set of changed allocated blocks, and not backing up the excluded changed allocated blocks, into the incremental image backup.

9 . The method as recited in claim 8 , further comprising, prior to the backing up the pruned set of blocks:

identifying files to be included in the incremental image backup that were previously excluded from the base image backup; and

augmenting the pruned set of changed allocated blocks to include the allocated blocks that correspond to content of the files to be included.

10 . One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing one or more programs that are configured, when executed, to cause one or more processors to perform the method as recited in claim 1 .