Fast Instantiation of Virtual Machines

摘要

Embodiments support instant forking of virtual machines (VMs) and state customization. Virtual device state and persistent storage of a child VM are defined based on virtual device state and persistent storage of parent VMs. After forking, a state of the child VM is customized based on configuration data. Customizing the state includes configuring one or more identities of the child VM, before bootup completes on the child VM.

主权项

1. A system for creating customized, forked virtual machines (VMs), said system comprising:
memory associated with a computing device, said memory storing a virtual device state and a memory state of a suspended first VM; storage for the first VM, said storage further including configuration data for a second VM; and a processor programmed to:
suspend execution of the first VM;tag the persistent storage of the suspended first VM as copy-on-write (COW);define a virtual device state of the second VM based on the virtual device state of the suspended first VM;define a memory state of the second VM based on the memory state of the suspended first VM;define persistent storage for the second VM based on the persistent storage of the first VM; andexecute the second VM to configure an identity of the second VM based on the configuration data.