Writable snapshots for boot consolidation

摘要

Boot consolidation based on writeable volume snapshots can leverage flexible mappings of snapshot dependencies. Such flexible mappings can be established by relating sequence numbers associated with various volume snapshots and can provide for an arbitrarily complex mapping to support a potentially unlimited number of writable snapshots in potentially any dependency configuration. Additionally, the pinning of volumes can provide support for chains of snapshots to depend from snapshots within other chains of snapshots. Merge agents can operate with writable snapshots and boot consolidation to provide system-wide updates where security patches, upgrades, and application software may be applied to a group of servers or a group of users in an efficient fashion.