Gang migration of virtual machines using cluster-wide deduplication

A system for gang migration with global deduplication, in a datacenter comprising a plurality of virtual machines in a cluster defined, by a set of information residing in a first storage medium, the cluster communicating through at least one data communication network, comprising:

• at least one processor configured to perform cluster-wide deduplication of the plurality of virtual machines to identify redundant memory pages of the first storage medium representing the respective virtual machines that have corresponding content;
• at least one communication link configured to communicate a simultaneous live migration of the plurality of virtual machines in the cluster, by communicating information sufficient to reconstitute the plurality of virtual machines in a cluster defined by the set of information residing in a second storage medium, through the at least one data communication network;
• the at least one processor being further configured, based on the identification of the redundant memory pages having corresponding content, to selectively communicate information representing the unique memory pages of the first storage medium through the at least one communication network to the second storage medium, substantially without communicating all of the memory pages of the first storage medium, and subsequently to communicate through the at least one communication network, duplicating the redundant memory pages of the first storage medium in the second storage medium selectively dependent on the identified redundant memory pages, to reconstitute the plurality of virtual machines in the second storage medium.

A method for migration of virtual machines with global deduplication, comprising:

• providing a plurality of virtual machines at a local facility, defined by a set of stored information comprising redundant portions, the network being interconnected with a wide area network;
• identifying at least a subset e redundant portions of the stored information;
• initiating a simultaneous live migration of the plurality of virtual machines by communicating through the wide area network to the remote location data sufficient to reconstitute the set of stored information comprising the identification of the subset of the elements of the redundant portions and the set of stored information less redundant ones of the subset of the redundant portions of the stored information;
• receiving at a remote location the data sufficient to reconstitute the set of stored information;
• duplicating the subset of the redundant portions of the stored information o reconstitute the set of stored information defining the plurality of virtual machines;
• and
• transferring an active status to the reconstituted plurality of virtual machines at e remote location