293 results about "Disk image" patented technology

Storage virtualization systems and methods that allow customers to manage storage as a utility rather than as islands of storage which are independent of each other. A demand mapped virtual disk image of up to an arbitrarily large size is presented to a host system. The virtualization system allocates physical storage from a storage pool dynamically in response to host I / O requests, e.g., SCSI I / O requests, allowing for the amortization of storage resources-through a disk subsystem while maintaining coherency amongst I / O RAID traffic. In one embodiment, the virtualization functionality is implemented in a controller device, such as a controller card residing in a switch device or other network device, coupled to a storage system on a storage area network (SAN). The resulting virtual disk image that is observed by the host computer is larger than the amount of physical storage actually consumed.

Various method and system embodiments of the present invention are directed to hierarchical control logic within each component data-storage system of a distributed data-storage system composed of networked component data-storage systems over which virtual disks, optionally replicated as virtual-disk images, composed of data segments in turn composed of data blocks, are distributed at the granularity of segments. Each data segment is distributed according to a configuration. The hierarchical control logic includes, in one embodiment of the present invention, a top-level coordinator, a virtual-disk-image-level coordinator, a segment-configuration-node-level coordinator, a configuration-group-level coordinator, and a configuration-level coordinator.

Storage virtualization systems and methods that allow customers to manage storage as a utility rather than as islands of storage which are independent of each other. A demand mapped virtual disk image of up to an arbitrarily large size is presented to a host system. The virtualization system allocates physical storage from a storage pool dynamically in response to host I / O requests, e.g., SCSI I / O requests, allowing for the amortization of storage resources through a disk subsystem while maintaining coherency amongst I / O RAID traffic. In one embodiment, the virtualization functionality is implemented in a controller device, such as a controller card residing in a switch device or other network device, coupled to a storage system on a storage area network (SAN). The resulting virtual disk image that is observed by the host computer is larger than the amount of physical storage actually consumed.

Described is a system and method used in manufacturing computer devices, in which a single manufacturing image file contains an internal partition and file system layout into which individual operating system component packages are written. The image file is independent of any particular storage technology. To generate the file, a disk image utility tool inputs a memory configuration file and a package-to-partition mapping file to create the partitions / file systems within the image file. The operating system components (package) are written into the partitions. To store (e.g., flash) the image file's data on a particular storage device, the image file is post-processed to customize the data for a particular storage device.

A system for injecting drivers and setup information into pre-created images for image-based provisioning includes a disk image, a software driver configured to allow access to a specific hardware device (such as a disk or a network interface card), and a provisioning tool. The provisioning tool may be configured to insert the software driver and customized system setup information (e.g., a host name and network information) into the disk image after the creation of the disk image and prior to a boot from the disk image of an uninstalled host including the specific hardware device.

A replicated decentralized storage system comprises a plurality of servers that locally store disk images for locally running virtual machines as well as disk images, for failover purposes, for remotely running virtual machines. To ensure that disk images stored for failover purposes are properly replicated upon an update of the disk image on the server running the virtual machine, a hash of a unique value known only to the server running the virtual machine is used to verify the origin of update operations that have been transmitted by the server to the other servers storing replications of the disk image for failover purposes. If verified, the update operations are added to such failover disk images.

The invention relates to the technical field relevant to cloud computing, in particular to a method for creating a virtual machine in a cloud computing system and the cloud computing system, wherein the cloud computing system comprises a cloud control server, at least one node control server and at least one storage server, wherein the storage server is used for storing virtual machine benchmark image files of the virtual machine, user expansion image files and user disk image files; and the method comprises the following steps: the cloud control server receives a user request and forwards the user request to the node control server, wherein the user request comprises the virtual machine benchmark image selected by the user, cpu (central processing unit) and the memory size and the user disk image files; and the node control server receives the user request forwarded by the cloud control server and creates the virtual machine according to the user request. By means of the method for creating the virtual machine in the cloud computing system and the cloud computing system disclosed by the invention, the time cost and bandwidth resources for creating the virtual machine and the use of transport network bandwidth in migration of the virtual machine are reduced, and the problem of loss of user data, caused by system crash of the virtual machine, is avoided.

A replicated decentralized storage system comprises a plurality of servers that locally store disk images for locally running virtual machines as well as disk images, for failover purposes, for remotely running virtual machines. To ensure that disk images stored for failover purposes are properly replicated upon an update of the disk image on the server running the virtual machine, a hash of a unique value known only to the server running the virtual machine is used to verify the origin of update operations that have been transmitted by the server to the other servers storing replications of the disk image for failover purposes. If verified, the update operations are added to such failover disk images. To enable the replicated decentralized system to recover from a failure of the primary server, the master secret is subdivided into parts and distributed to other servers in the cluster. Upon a failure of the primary server, a secondary server receives a threshold number of the parts and is able to recreate the master secret and failover virtual machines that were running in the failed primary server.

Systems, methods, and computer program products are provided for reducing the size of image level backups. An example method receives backup parameters identifying a physical or Virtual Machine (VM) to backup and at least one file system object to include in the backup. The method connects to production storage corresponding to the selected physical or virtual machine and obtains access to data stored in disk corresponding to the selected file system object(s). The method fetches file allocation table (FAT) blocks from the disk and parses contents of the FAT blocks to determine if the disk blocks correspond to the selected file system object(s). The method creates a backup disk image FAT comprising blocks corresponding to the selected file system object(s). The method creates a reconstructed disk image FAT blocks corresponding to the backup FAT and disk image data blocks belonging to the selected file system object(s) and all other disk image data blocks are saved as zero blocks. A reconstructed disc image is compressed and stored in a backup file on backup storage, or replicated (copied) to another storage intact.

A method for updating a plurality of disk images, each of the plurality of disk images derived from a common base disk image and a delta image comprising a plurality of delta files, includes applying a delta file to a base disk image to generate a second disk image comprising a portion of the base disk image modified by the delta file and an unmodified portion of the base disk image. Each delta file represents at least one difference between one of the plurality of user disk images and the base disk image. The method includes applying a patch to a copy of the base disk image, and determining that the patch is applied to a portion of the base disk image corresponding to the unmodified portion of the base disk image. The delta file is applied to the patched copy of the base disk image.

A data processing network has a virtual hard drive emulator and client terminals that share a virtual disk image. Client-specific read-write versions of selected files or directories are supported. All clients access the client-specific versions using the same name and address identifiers (for example, the same file name for a given configuration file), but each client has an exclusive version. A file ID distinguishes respective clients. These files are maintained alongside other files of other types and attributes. The selection of files to be client-specific can be predetermined, or a client-specific version of a file can be generated if the client executes a write operation to a client-specific file or area, the written data containing data read by the client in any of memory area available to the clients (RAM, Virtual Disk Drive, Hard Disk drive etc.). The technique supports customization while maximizing administrative control of operating system versions and minimizing redundant storage. File access for client terminals can be made close to systems having local hard drives.

A mechanism is provided for making information about the virtual disk image file and / or its associated virtual image configuration file more readily available to a user. The virtual disk image file format is expanded to include fields in which information about the data in the file can be stored. Extensible information on file content, compatible HW configurations, compatible host OSes, timeout status, DRM status, patch state, and network topology, tag data for indexing, configuration files, saved state files, operation history data, and the like is stored in a location within a virtual disk image file that can be read without executing the virtual machine. This information can then be used to search the contents of the virtual disk image, to enforce usage policies, to provide extensibility for vendors, and the like.