Patent US 8,938,517

A method, system and a computer program product that includes a non-transitory computer readable medium that stores instructions for: receiving, by a target entity, a plurality of information blocks and metadata that is associated with the plurality of information blocks, wherein the metadata comprises non-block layer metadata that differs from block layer metadata; and performing at least one memory storage operation on the information blocks before at least some of the information blocks are sent to a remote storage device over a wide area network (WAN).