Efficiently moving virtual machines between network hosts

A system comprising:

• a memory device;
• and
• a processing device, operatively coupled to the memory device, to perform operations comprising:
• generating a block list comprising a plurality of list items, wherein each list item identifies a respective block of a source virtual machine image, and the list items are ordered in the block list according to a timestamp of each respective block, wherein the timestamp indicates a time of a last access of the respective block;
• sending the block list to a destination computing device;
• receiving, from the destination computing device, one or more candidate blocks;
• determining whether the one or more candidate blocks are included in the source virtual machine image;
• and
• sending, to the destination computing device, a result indicating whether the one or more candidate blocks are included in the source virtual machine image.

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing instructions that cause a processing device to perform operations comprising:

• generating a block list comprising a plurality of list items, wherein each list item identifies a respective block of a source virtual machine image, and the list items are ordered in the block list according to a timestamp of each respective block, wherein the timestamp indicates a time of a last access of the respective block;
• sending the block list to a destination computing device;
• receiving, from the destination computing device, one or more candidate blocks;
• determining whether the one or more candidate blocks are included in the source virtual machine image;
• and
• sending, to the destination computing device, a result indicating whether the one or more candidate blocks are included in the source virtual machine image.