Cloning virtual machines

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016299708-A1
Application number	US-201514681111-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Apr 8, 2015
Priority date	Apr 8, 2015
Publication date	Oct 13, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A virtual machine system clones a parent virtual machine on a host by creating an open virtualization format (OVF) package of the parent virtual machine, creating a metainfo file of the OVF package, sending the metainfo file to a tracker, and cloning the parent virtual machine to other hosts by accessing the tracker to determine pieces of the OVF packages are located on the host and any of the other hosts, downloading the pieces of the OVF packages to the other hosts, assembling the OVF package on the other hosts, and deploying full clones of the parent virtual machine on the other hosts from the assembled OVF package.

First claim

We claim:

1 . A method for a virtual machine system to clone a parent virtual machine with a virtual machine disk on a datastore of a first host, comprising:
creating an open virtualization format (OVF) package of the parent virtual machine, the OVF package including an OVF descriptor and a copy of the virtual machine disk; creating a metainfo file based on the OVF package and an address of a tracker; sending the metainfo file to the tracker; cloning the parent virtual machine to a second host, comprising:
accessing the tracker to determine the first datastore has pieces of the OVF package;
downloading at least some of the pieces of the OVF package from the first datastore to a second datastore of the second host;
based on the metainfo file, assembling the OVF package on the second datastore from the downloaded pieces of the OVF package; and
deploying a first full clone of the parent virtual machine on the second host based on the assembled OVF package; and
cloning the parent virtual machine to a third host, comprising:
accessing the tracker to determine the first datastore has the pieces of the OVF package and the second datastore has at least some of the pieces of the OVF package;
downloading different pieces of the OVF package from the first and the second datastores to a third datastore of the third host;
based on the metainfo file, assembling the OVF package on the third datastore from the downloaded pieces of the OVF package; and
deploying a second full clone of the parent virtual machine on the third host based on the assembled OVF package.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising uploading the metainfo file to the second and the third hosts, wherein cloning the parent virtual machine to the second and the third hosts each further comprises opening the metainfo file to access the tracker.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
cloning the parent virtual machine to a fourth host, comprising:
accessing the tracker to determine the first data store has the pieces of the OVF package, and the second and the third datastores have at least some of the pieces of the OVF package;
selecting datastores from the first, the second, and the third datastores;
downloading different pieces of the OVF package from the selected datastores to a fourth datastore of the fourth host;
based on the metainfo file, assembling the OVF package on the fourth datastore from the downloaded pieces of the OVF package; and
deploying a third full clone of the parent virtual machine on the fourth host based on the assembled OVF package.

4 . The method of claim 3 , further comprising uploading the metainfo file to the second, the third, and the fourth hosts, wherein cloning the parent virtual machine to the second, the third, and the fourth hosts each further comprises opening the metainfo file to access the tracker.

5 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the selected datastores are chosen based on conditions of network connections from the first, the second, and the third datastores to the fourth datastore.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
creating a linked clone on a fourth host, comprising:
selecting a datastore from the first, the second, and the third datastores; and
creating the linked clone on the fourth host based on a full clone of the parent virtual machine on the selected datastore, the linked clone comprising a difference virtual machine disk on a fourth datastore of the fourth host that stores changes to the linked clone.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the selected datastore is chosen based on conditions of network connections from the first, the second, and the third datastores to the fourth datastore.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein downloading the different pieces of the OVF package from the first and the second datastores to the third datastore of the third host occurs in parallel to downloading at least some of the pieces of the OVF package from the first datastore to the second datastore of the second host.

9 . A virtual machine system, comprising:
a tracker for peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing; a first host, comprising:
a first hypervisor;
a first cloning agent; and
a first datastore having a virtual machine disk of a parent virtual machine;
a second host, comprising:
a second hypervisor;
a second cloning agent; and
a second datastore; and
a third host, comprising:
a third hypervisor;
a third cloning agent; and
a third datastore;
wherein:
the first cloning agent is to create a metainfo file based on pieces of the virtual machine disk and an address of the tracker, and send the metainfo file to the tracker;
the second cloning agent is to:
access the tracker to determine the first datastore has the pieces of the virtual machine disk;
download at least some of the pieces of the virtual machine disk from the first datastore to the second datastore; and
based on the metainfo file, assemble the virtual machine disk on the second datastore from the downloaded pieces of the virtual machine disk; and
deploy a first full clone of the parent virtual machine on the second host based on the assembled virtual machine disk;

the third cloning agent is to:
access the tracker to determine the first datastore has the pieces of the virtual machine disk and the second datastore has at least some of the pieces of the virtual machine disk;
download different pieces of the virtual machine disk from the first and the second datastores to the third datastore; and
based on the metainfo file, assemble the virtual machine disk on the third datastore from the downloaded pieces of the virtual machine disk; and
deploy a second full clone of the parent virtual machine on the third host based on the assembled virtual machine disk.

10 . The system of claim 9 , wherein the virtual machine disk and an open virtualization format (OVF) descriptor are part of an OVF package, and the first cloning agent is to create the OVF package and the metainfo file based on the OVF package.

11 . The system of claim 9 , wherein the first cloning agent is to upload the metainfo file to the second and the third hosts, and the second and the third hosts each accesses the tracker based on the metainfo file.

12 . The system of claim 9 , further comprising:
a fourth host, comprising:
a fourth hypervisor;
a fourth cloning agent; and
a fourth datastore; and
wherein the fourth cloning agent is to:
access the tracker to determine the first datastore has the pieces of the virtual machine disk, and the second and the third datastores have at least some of the pieces of the virtual machine disk;
select datastores from the first, the second, and the third datastores;
download different pieces of the virtual machine disk from the selected datastores to the fourth datastore;
based on the metainfo file, assemble the virtual machine disk on the fourth datastore from the downloaded pieces of the virtual machine disk; and
deploy a third full clone of the parent virtual machine on the fourth host based on the assembled virtual machine disk.

13 . The system of claim 10 , wherein the first cloning agent is to upload the metainfo file to the second, the third, and the fourth hosts, and the second, the third, and the fourth hosts each accesses the tracker based on the metainfo file.

14 . The system of claim 10 , wherein the fourth agent selects from the first, the second, and the third datastores based on conditions of network connections from the first, the second, and the third datastores to the fourth datastore.

15 . The system of claim 9 ,

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Yang Ji
• Lin Yonghua
• Bian Xiaoding

Classifications

• G06F9/45558 Primary

  Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects · CPC title

• G06F2009/45562

  Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances · CPC title

• G06F3/0665

  at area level, e.g. provisioning of virtual or logical volumes · CPC title

• G06F3/0689

  Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD · CPC title

• G06F3/0619 Primary

  in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors · CPC title