HIGH FREQUENCY SNAPSHOT TECHNIQUE FOR IMPROVING DATA REPLICATION IN DISASTER RECOVERY ENVIRONMENT

A high frequency snapshot technique improves data replication in a disaster recovery (DR) environment. A base snapshot is generated from failover data at a primary site and replicated to a placeholder file at a secondary site. Upon commencement of the base snapshot generation and replication, incremental light weight snapshots (LWSs) of the failover data are captured and replicated to the secondary site. A staging file at the secondary site accumulates the replicated LWSs ("high-frequency snapshots"). The staging file is populated with the LWSs in parallel with the replication of the base snapshot at the placeholder file. At a subsequent predetermined time interval, the accumulated LWSs are synthesized to capture a "checkpoint" snapshot by applying and pruning the accumulated LWSs at the staging file. Once the base snapshot is fully replicated, the pruned LWSs are merged to the base snapshot to synchronize the replicated failover data.