Detecting and preventing virtual disk storage linkage faults

摘要

In an exemplary embodiment, a virtual disk file can be assigned an identifier and a virtual disk files that is dependent on the virtual disk file can include a copy of the identifier. In the instance that the virtual disk file is opened and data is modified that causes the contents of a virtual disk extent to change the identifier can be changed. If the virtual disk file and the dependent virtual disk file are used to instantiate a virtual disk the difference between identifiers can be detected, which is indicative of the fact that the virtual disk may be corrupted. Other techniques are described in the detailed description, claims, and figures that form a part of this document.

主权项

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage media tangibly embodying instructions that upon execution by a processor cause the processor to:
open a virtual disk file, the virtual disk file including a unique identifier identifying the virtual disk file and virtual disk extent data that forms at least a part of the data in a virtual disk, wherein a first unique identifier is stored as the unique identifier; overwrite the first unique identifier stored as the unique identifier in the virtual disk file with a second unique identifier in response to detecting an attempt to write information to the virtual disk file that affects how virtual disk extent data is interpreted; determine that the second unique identifier was written to a persistent copy of the virtual disk file; and write the information to the virtual disk file in response to determining that the second unique identifier was written to the persistent copy of the virtual disk file.