Method and apparatus to share a single storage drive across a large number of unique systems when data is highly redundant

摘要

A boot appliance for writing data to a particular host system's boot image and returning boot image data to a particular host system of a plurality of host systems. The boot appliance includes at least one storage medium, wherein the at least one storage medium is configured to store a base boot image and a plurality of variance boot images. The boot appliance further includes a buffer. The base boot appliance also includes a computer readable medium embodying computer code configured to cause the boot appliance to perform a method for writing data to a particular host system's boot image and for returning boot image data to a particular host system of a plurality of host systems.

主权项

1. A method for writing data to a particular host system's boot image, wherein the particular host system's boot image is based upon a base boot image and a particular variance boot image of a plurality of variance boot images, the particular variance boot image being associated with the particular host system, the method comprising:
receiving write data for the particular host system's boot image, wherein the received write data is associated with a location of the particular host system's boot image; reading data from the base boot image, wherein a location of the data read from the base boot image corresponds to the location associated with the received write data for the particular host system's boot image; merging at least one block from the base boot image and at least one block from the particular variance boot image into merged read data by substituting the at least one block from the particular variance boot image into one or more blocks of the base boot image; comparing the received write data to the data read from the base boot image; determining whether a portion of the received write data is different from the data read from the base boot image; writing the portion of the received write data in the particular variance boot image upon a determination that the portion of the received write data is different from the base boot image; and performing a decompression of the plurality of variance images.