Patent attributes
Systems and methods are disclosed for efficiently performing backups using snapshots. A splitter receives write operations and replicates the write operations to a data protection appliance and to a primary storage. The data embodied in the replicated writes is stored in a high-speed storage in a snapshot over a time increment. The snapshot represents data blocks that have changed since a previous time increment. A list of changed blocks is kept in high-speed storage that corresponds to the snapshot blocks. The snapshot blocks are associated with files and file system structure by (a) traversing a file system structure (FSS) for a file system or (b) by traversing the list of changed blocks and looking up changed blocks that are in inode format in the FSS, an inode tree structure, or directly. The snapshot, list of changed blocks, and list of associated changed files are transferred from high-speed storage to backup storage.
