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 system comprising:
circuitry configured to send a request, from a guest operating system (OS) executing on a virtual machine (VM), to open a virtual disk file, wherein the virtual disk file includes a first 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; circuitry configured to detect a change from the first unique identifier to a second unique identifier based at least in part on detecting an attempt to write information to the virtual disk file that affects how virtual disk extent data is interpreted; circuitry configured to determine that the second unique identifier was written to a persistent copy of the virtual disk file; and circuitry configured to modify data in the virtual disk file.