US 2012/0084775 A1 · Techniques for Streaming Virtual Machines from a Server to a Host

Abstract

Techniques for configuring a commodity server to host virtual hard disks are disclosed herein. In an exemplary embodiment, a virtual hard disk file can be split into a plurality of differencing VHD files and one or more of the files can be downloaded to a virtualization host as it runs off the VHD files stored on the server. After the one or more VHD files are downloaded, the virtualization host can be configured to use the local copy instead of the copy on the commodity server. In addition to the foregoing, other techniques are described in the claims, the detailed description, and the figures.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system for deploying virtual hard drives to virtual machine hosts, comprising:

a first server, comprising:
a first processor;
and
a first memory coupled to the first processor, the first memory including instructions that upon execution cause the first server to:
execute a guest operating system off of a collection of virtual hard disk files stored on a second server;
store, while simultaneously executing a guest operating system off the collection of virtual hard disk files, a received copy of the collection of virtual hard disk files in a storage device attached to the first server;
and
execute the guest operating system off the copy of the collection of the virtual hard disk files in response to determining that the copy of the collection of the virtual hard disk files was stored in the storage device attached to the first server.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Techniques for Streaming Virtual Machines from a Server to a Host

Life of this patent

Techniques for Streaming Virtual Machines from a Server to a Host

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20