Patent ID: 7757034
Filing Date: 2010-07-13
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A virtualization system comprising: a host operating system (OS); virtualization software that maintains a virtualization environment for running a Virtual Machine (VM) without system level privileges; a plurality of processes running within the host OS, each process having its own virtual memory, wherein the virtualization software is one of the processes; at least one image file stored in persistent storage and maintained by the host OS, wherein the image file represents virtualized physical memory of the VM; and a plurality of memory pages of the VM aggregated into blocks, the blocks being stored in the image file and addressable in block form, wherein the virtualization software manages the blocks so that blocks can be mapped to the virtualization software process virtual memory and released when the blocks are no longer necessary, wherein the host OS swaps the blocks between the image file and physical memory using memory mapped file mechanism of the host OS, when a block that is not in physical memory is accessed by the VM, wherein the VM physical memory size corresponds to image file size and is not subject to limitation on virtual process memory size set by the host OS.