Enablement and acceleration of live and near-live migration of virtual machines and their associated storage across networks

A data processing system comprising:

• a storage having a computer usable program code stored thereof for migrating a virtual machine between a source cloud and a destination cloud;
• a bus system connecting the storage to a processor;
• and
• a processor, wherein the processor executes the computer usable program code:
• to mount at least one temporary storage to a partition management firmware of the source cloud and to a partition management firmware of the destination cloud;
• to perform a first storage location migration of the virtual machine from the source cloud to the at least one temporary storage;
• to perform a second storage location migration of the virtual machine from the at least one temporary storage to final destination storage of the destination cloud;
• and to unmount the at least one temporary storage from the partition management firmware of the source cloud and from the partition management firmware of the destination cloud.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer executable instructions encoded thereon for migrating a virtual machine between a source cloud and a destination cloud, the computer-readable medium comprising:

• instructions for mounting at least one temporary storage to a partition management firmware of the source cloud and to a partition management firmware of the destination cloud;
• instructions for performing a first storage location migration of the virtual machine from the source cloud to the at least one temporary storage;
• instructions for performing a second storage location migration of the virtual machine from the at least one temporary storage to final destination storage of the destination cloud;
• and
• instructions for unmounting the at least one temporary storage from the partition management firmware of the source cloud and from the partition management firmware of the destination cloud.