US 2020/0401428 A1 · HIGH PERFORMANCE APPLICATION DELIVERY TO VDI DESKTOPS USING ATTACHABLE APPLICATION CONTAINERS

Abstract

A system is described for high-performance delivery of applications via attachable application storage volumes (ASV), particularly in cloud-based VDI environments, by precaching application data that is determined by learning the application behavior. Data blocks for files that are likely to be used by the application are prefetched and cached by virtual machines before the application requests those blocks so that the relevant data is instantly available in memory when required without needing to wait for the data to be transmitted from the ASV. In order to efficiently prefetch content, the read pattern for application files and their corresponding blocks is inspected. This information is used during application delivery after a user logs onto the virtual machine to selectively prefetch those blocks from the ASVs. As a result, when the user launches those applications, the system avoids the performance penalty of reading those blocks from the ASV.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method for delivering an application contained in an application storage volume (ASV) residing on a storage device to a virtual machine (VM) hosted on a server, comprising:

by an agent executing on the VM, mounting the ASV on the VM to make the application executable in the VM from the ASV;
reading a manifest in the ASV to identify a set of data blocks that are likely to be accessed during application launch, wherein the manifest is generated during an application capture process of the ASV;
prior to receiving a request to launch the application, pre-fetching the set of data blocks of the application identified in the manifest by the agent and storing the set of data blocks into a cache associated with the VM;
receiving a request to launch the application on the VM;
and
launching the application on the VM from the ASV by accessing the retrieved pre-fetched data blocks in the cache associated with the VM.

3 more elements

A computing device for delivering an application contained in an application storage volume (ASV) residing on a storage device to the computing device, comprising:

at least one processor;
and
memory including instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the computing device to perform the steps of:
by an agent executing on the computing device, mounting the ASV on the computing device to make the application executable in the computing device from the ASV;
reading a manifest in the ASV to identify a set of data blocks that are likely to be accessed during application launch, wherein the manifest is generated during an application capture process of the ASV;
prior to receiving a request to launch the application, pre-fetching the set of data blocks of the application identified in the manifest by the agent and storing the set of data blocks into a cache associated with the computing device;
receiving a request to launch the application on the computing device;
and
launching the application on the computing device from the ASV by accessing the retrieved pre-fetched data blocks in the cache associated with the computing device.

6 more elements

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium for delivering an application contained in an application storage volume (ASV) residing on a storage device to a virtual machine (VM) hosted on a server, comprising one or more sequences of instructions, the instructions when executed by one or more processors causing the one or more processors to execute the operations of:

by an agent executing on the VM, mounting the ASV on the VM to make the application executable in the VM from the ASV;
reading a manifest in the ASV to identify a set of data blocks that are likely to be accessed during application launch, wherein the manifest is generated during an application capture process of the ASV;
prior to receiving a request to launch the application, pre-fetching the set of data blocks of the application identified in the manifest by the agent and storing the set of data blocks into a cache of associated with VM;
receiving a request to launch the application on the VM;
and
launching the application on the VM from the ASV by accessing the retrieved pre-fetched data blocks in the cache associated with the VM.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

High performance application delivery to vdi desktops using attachable application containers

Life of this patent

High performance application delivery to vdi desktops using attachable application containers

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20