Storage assisted virtual machine backups using storage VMOTION and XCOPY

1. A computer-implemented method of transferring data directly from primary storage to secondary storage in a virtualized network including virtual machine (VM) based storage, comprising:

exposing a source volume in the primary storage and exporting it to a hypervisor host of the virtualized network so that the host can see the source volume;

preparing a destination volume of the secondary storage as an empty volume and exporting it to the hypervisor host so that the host can see the destination volume; and

moving, in the hypervisor host data from the exposed source volume to the exported empty destination volume using a combination of Storage Direct, Storage VMotion, and XCOPY technology, and wherein the XCOPY technology provides a direct transfer of data from the primary storage to the secondary storage.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the primary storage is production storage and the secondary storage is protection storage for storing data of the source volume backed by a deduplicated backup process.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the deduplicated backup process utilizes change block tracking (CBT), the method further comprising:

taking a full backup of the system followed by one or more regular incremental backups;

receiving, for the full backup, an entire range of blocks by the secondary storage as part of an XCOPY operation, the entire range representing an entire Virtual Disk region; and

finding, for the incremental backup, an overlap of changed blocks of storage logical units (LU) and XCOPY block ranges to get the changed blocks of the Virtual Disk.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising mapping the source volume and the destination volume one of both within the primary storage, or both within the secondary storage.

5. The method of claim 3 further comprising mapping the source volume from within the primary storage and the destination volume from within the secondary storage.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the Storage Direct technology represents a process that allows a host to directly access a backed-up volume without performing a restore operation.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the Storage VMotion represents a process providing seamless migration across storage systems without imposing any down-time or requiring application reconfiguration by utilizing a storage system-based data copy offload mechanism.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the data copy offload mechanism comprises XCOPY as a standard SCSI (small computer system interface) command wherein the copy operation is offloaded to the array software by providing an offset and range a storage array for performing the direct data transfer between a source and destination within the same storage array.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein the data copy offload mechanism of the XCOPY technology comprises an Enhanced XCOPY primitive that allows the copy operation to be offloaded between the source and destination in different storage arrays.

10. A computer-implemented method of transferring data directly from a production volume to a protection volume, comprising:

taking a snapshot copy of the production volume;

preparing the protection volume to receive backup data from the production volume;

exposing, through first a mapping, the production volume snapshot copy and prepared protection volume, through a second mapping, to a hypervisor host as if they are two regular virtual machine file system (VMFS) volumes; and

performing the backup operation for the VMFS based virtual machines by offloading the data copy operation to the storage system of at least one of the production volume or protection volume to enable a direct transfer of data without involving the hypervisor host.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein each of the first mapping and second mapping is performed from within one of: a production storage array storing the production volume, or a protection storage array storing the protection volume.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein the backup operation utilizes change block tracking (CBT), the method further comprising:

taking a full backup of the production volume followed by one or more regular incremental backups; receiving, for the full backup, an entire range of blocks by the protection storage as part of an XCOPY operation, the entire range representing an entire Virtual Disk region; and

finding, for the incremental backup, an overlap of changed blocks of storage logical units (LU) and XCOPY block ranges to get the changed blocks of the Virtual Disk.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein the first mapping is performed from within a production storage array storing the production volume, and the second mapping is performed from within a protection storage array storing the protection volume.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein the second mapping is performed using a Storage Direct process that allows a host to directly access a backed-up volume without performing a restore operation.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein the step of performing the backup operation further comprises invoke a Storage VMotion process for the VMFS based VMs by offloading the data copy operation to the production or protection storage systems to enable direct transfer of data without involving the hypervisor host.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the data copy offload mechanism comprises XCOPY as a standard SCSI (small computer system interface) command wherein the copy operation is offloaded to the array software by providing an offset and range a storage array for performing the direct data transfer between a source and destination within the same storage array.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the data copy offload mechanism comprises an Enhanced XCOPY primitive that allows the copy operation to be offloaded between the source and destination in different storage arrays.

18. The method of claim 10 further comprising performing a restore of the protection volume back to the production volume, by:

importing the backup copy from the protection target to the production storage as a volume using a Storage Direct/Direct Access feature.

exporting the imported backup copy to the hypervisor host as a volume, to act as a source in XCOPY;

provisioning a new destination volume is in production storage;

exporting the provisioned volume to the host to act as a destination in XCOPY; and

performing an SV-Motion-process using XCOPY of Virtual Disk(s) from the Storage Direct/Direct Access volume to snapshot the source volume to the new destination volume.

19. A system for transferring data directly from primary storage to secondary storage in a virtualized network including virtual machine (VM) based storage, comprising:

a storage assisted virtual machine backup component exposing a source volume in the primary storage to a hypervisor host of the virtualized network so that the host an see the source volume, and preparing a destination volume of the secondary storage as an empty volume and exporting it to the hypervisor host so that the host can see the destination volume; and

an interface component moving, in the hypervisor host data from the exposed source volume to the exported empty destination volume using a combination of Storage Direct, Storage VMotion, and XCOPY or enhanced XCOPY technologies, and wherein the XCOPY technology provides a direct transfer of data from the primary storage to the secondary storage when both are in the same storage array, and the enhanced XCOPY technology provides a direct transfer of data from the primary storage to the secondary storage when both are in different storage arrays.

20. The system of claim 19 wherein the primary storage is production storage and the secondary storage is protection storage for storing data of the source volume backed by a deduplicated backup process.