Abstract: Embodiments provide backup up databases using a checkpoint mechanism without requiring saving of transaction logs by: taking a backup snapshot of the database; exposing an iSCSI disk using the snapshot backup as a target by encapsulating the snapshot in a virtual disk; creating a read/write differencing disk for the exposed iSCSI disk; replaying transaction logs onto the iSCSI disk; and streaming the contents of the virtual disk to a storage medium to create a saveset.

Abstract: Embodiments provide granular recovery of virtual machine backups by generating the virtual machine backups comprising virtual disks that are configured as iSCSI targets; exposing, with an iSCSI server, the virtual disks as a logical unit number to an iSCSI client; performing SCSI read operations from the virtual disk using defined application program interfaces (APIs); and mounting a backup save set comprising the virtual disk files as a local disk on a computer where data recover is to be performed. Embodiments also emulate virtual disk storage as an iSCSI target by exposing the virtual disk as a logical unit number to an iSCSI client and mounting a backup save set as a local disk in an iSCSI server executing a backup process defining a granularity for data restore operations.

Abstract: Information identifying a set of changed blocks on a volume of a client are received. The changed blocks are blocks of the volume that have changed since a previous backup of the client. The set of changed blocks are filtered to identify a subset of changed blocks that are associated with a particular file. The subset of changed blocks is streamed to a backup storage server for storage as an incremental virtual hard disk file. The incremental virtual hard disk file is associated to a full backup virtual hard disk file, where the full backup virtual hard disk file is a full backup of a previous version of the particular file.