Desktop image management for virtual desktops

摘要

A desktop image management system is described that can efficiently distribute updates to virtual desktops running on host servers in a data center. The system is comprised of a central server and multiple agents, each agent installed on a virtual machine. When a VM receives an update from the central server, the files are stored in a single instance store on the host server. The agent running on the VM then creates a corresponding stub file (empty of content) on the VM for each file in the single instance store. The agent further marks the stub file to indicate that the stub file is mapped to the single instance store. When the guest operating system requests to read the stub file, the virtual disk layer of the host server detects that the requested block has been marked and fetches the content of the file from the single instance store.

主权项

1. A method for efficient management of virtual desktop images, said method comprising:
receiving, on a central server, a request to distribute an update to a plurality of virtual desktops residing on virtual machines being executed by a host computing device, the host computing device including a hypervisor having a virtual disk layer configured to manage access to a physical storage associated with the host computing device by the virtual machines; transmitting a single copy of content of the update from the central server to the host computing device without transmitting individual copies of the content for each of the plurality virtual desktops; receiving the content of a file to be updated from the central server; storing the content of the file to be updated in a single instance store on the physical storage; in response to receiving the content of the file to be updated, applying the update by an agent operating on each virtual machine to be updated, the agent creating a corresponding stub file on each virtual machine to be updated, the stub file being empty of the content, such that at the end of completion of the update for the virtual machine, the stub file of the virtual machine does not contain the content of the file that has been updated; marking the stub file to indicate that the stub file is mapped to the single instance store; receiving, by the virtual disk layer, a request to access the content of the file from a guest operating system executed on a virtual machine; fetching the content of the file from the single instance store by the virtual disk layer.