Virtual machine linking

A system including:

• one or more processors;
• and
• memory coupled to the processors, and including computer instructions that, when executed on the one or more processors, cause the system to implement operations in a method of identifying a snapshot for a virtual machine (VM), the operations comprising, at least:
• receiving a request for a snapshot of a VM, the request including a new ID for the VM;
• determining whether the new ID corresponds to a newly created VM by accessing a use case identifier, or corresponds to an existing VM previously registered using a previous ID;
• based on determining that the new ID corresponds to a newly created VM, creating a new VM Group (VMG) object for the newly created VM;
• based on determining that the new ID corresponds to an existing VM, identifying an existing VMG object for the existing VM and adding the new ID to the existing VMG object thereby holding the new ID and previous ID for the existing VM together in a single object;
• using the new VMG object or the existing VMG object, accessing a snapshot history stored in association with the previous ID or a snapshot history stored in association with the new ID and returning at least one snapshot from the accessed snapshot history;
• and
• making an incremental copy of the VM based upon the returned snapshot.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium including instructions which, when read by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations in a method of identifying a snapshot for a virtual machine (VM), the operations comprising, at least:

• receiving a request for a snapshot of a VM, the request including a new ID for the VM;
• determining whether the new ID corresponds to a newly created VM by accessing a use case identifier, or corresponds to an existing VM previously registered using a previous ID;
• based on determining that the new ID corresponds to a newly created VM, creating a new VM Group (VMG) object for the newly created VM;
• based on determining that the new ID corresponds to an existing VM, identifying an existing VMG object for the existing VM and adding the new ID to the existing VMG object thereby holding the new ID and previous ID for the existing VM together in a single object;
• using the new VMG object or the existing VMG object, accessing a snapshot history stored in association with the previous ID or a snapshot history stored in association with the new ID and returning at least one snapshot from the accessed snapshot history;
• and
• making an incremental copy of the VM based upon the returned snapshot.