CLONING VIRTUAL MACHINES

摘要

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.

主权项

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; anddeploying 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; anddeploying a second full clone of the parent virtual machine on the third host based on the assembled OVF package.