Abstract: Provided are techniques for providing and managing data protection by using incremental forever for storage to cloud object stores. An incremental offload is performed by using one or more extents to identify blocks of data for a version of a virtual machine in operational recovery storage to be offloaded to a cloud object store, wherein each of the one or more extents identifies locations of the blocks of data. The blocks of data are converted to objects in an incremental forever data format. The objects are offloaded to the cloud object store. The details of the offloading of the objects are stored in a local database in the operational recovery storage. The local database is copied from the operational recovery storage to the cloud object store as a database copy.

Abstract: Provided are techniques for providing and managing data protection by using incremental forever for storage to cloud object stores. An incremental offload is performed by using one or more extents to identify blocks of data for a version of a virtual machine in operational recovery storage to be offloaded to a cloud object store, wherein each of the one or more extents identifies locations of the blocks of data. The blocks of data are converted to objects in an incremental forever data format. The objects are offloaded to the cloud object store. The details of the offloading of the objects are stored in a local database in the operational recovery storage. The local database is copied from the operational recovery storage to the cloud object store as a database copy.

Abstract: To implement snapshot operations of a storage volume, a snapshot agent is invoked to initiate the snapshot operations of the storage volume, to establish access to a directory of one or more files to be excluded from the snapshot operations of the storage volume, and to process each write request of the storage volume based on the directory of file(s) to be excluded from the snapshot operations of the storage volume. The storage agent can additionally process each read request of the storage volume based on the directory of file(s) to be excluded from the snapshot operations of the storage volume.

Abstract: Provided is a method, system and program for backing up the contents of a source storage device as an object in a data storage subsystem wherein the object contains image data representing the contents of the source storage device, and restoring the contents of the source storage device from the object to a file such as a flat file. The contents of the file may be copied to a target storage device to restore the contents of the source storage device from the file to the target storage device which may be the source storage device or another target storage device.