Patent attributes
A virtual machine (VM) is disclosed. The VM includes a virtual processor including a plurality of applications, a volume shadow copy service (VSS) controller and an intelligent application requester that is configured to discover an application in the plurality of applications. The discovered application requires VSS supported backup and needs to be monitored for disk input/output (I/O) from a time a backup operation of the application is initiated till the back operation ends. The VM also includes a software component configured to monitor the disk I/O related to the application. The software component is configured to interface with the VSS controller to effectuate VSS supported backup of the application. The VM includes a control interface to enable an external software to control the intelligent application requester.