Methods and systems for provisioning a virtual disk to diskless virtual and physical machines

A method for creating a virtual disk, the method comprising:

• identifying a first value associated with a paravirtual network interface card on a computing machine;
• identifying a second value associated with a physical network interface card on the computing machine;
• binding the computing machine to the paravirtual network interface card using the first value to generate a first set of binding information representative of a communicative link between the computing machine and the paravirtual network interface card;
• binding the computing machine to the physical network interface card using the second value to generate a second set of binding information representative of a communicative link between the computing machine and the physical network interface card;
• and
• creating a virtual disk using the first set of binding information and the second set of binding information.

A system for creating a virtual disk, the system comprising:

• a computing machine;
• a paravirtual network interface card, on the computing machine, the paravirtual network interface card having an associated first value;
• a physical network interface card, on the computing machine, the physical network interface card having an associated second value;
• and
• an installer executing on the computing machine to:
• identify the associated first value,
• identify the associated second value,
• bind the paravirtual network interface card to the computing machine using the associated first value, to create a first set of binding information representative of the communicative link between the computing machine and the paravirtual network interface card,
• bind the physical network interface card to the computing machine using the associated second value, to create a second set of binding information representative of the communicative link between the computing machine and the physical network interface card, and
• create a virtual disk that includes the first set of binding information and the second set of binding information.

The system of claim 12, further comprising:

• a boot manager executing on a second computing machine having an associated characteristic, the characteristic identifying the second computing machine as one of either of a virtual computing machine and a physical computing machine, the boot manager executing to:
• determine the associated characteristic,
• select, responsive to identification of the associated characteristic, a network interface card from a group consisting of a physical network interface card and a paravirtual network interface card,
• load a driver associated with the selected network interface card to the second computing machine from the virtual disk,
• establish a connection between the second computing machine and the virtual disk using the loaded driver, and
• boot the second computing machine from the virtual disk via the connection.