Patent ID: 8453145
Filing Date: 2013-05-28
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for cloning a virtual disk file in a virtual computing environment, the method comprising: under control of a computer system comprising one or more physical computing devices: receiving a request to clone a source virtual disk file, the source virtual disk file comprising a source file system representing data stored in the source virtual disk file; instructing a cloning application to begin cloning of a clone virtual disk file from the source virtual disk file, the clone virtual disk file comprising a clone file system representing data stored or to be stored in the clone virtual disk file; launching a virtual machine; associating the clone virtual disk file with the virtual machine before the cloning of the clone virtual disk file is completed, the virtual machine having access to the entire clone file system of the clone virtual disk file before the cloning of the clone virtual disk file is completed; receiving a read request from an application executing in the virtual machine for data represented in the clone file system of the clone virtual disk file; determining whether the data has been written to the clone virtual disk file, wherein: receiving a write request from the cloning application to write data to a region in the clone virtual disk file; determining whether the region in the clone virtual disk file has been written, wherein: receiving a write request from an application executing on the virtual machine or from a cache manager configured to cache input/output requests to the clone virtual disk file; and performing the write request from the application executing on the virtual machine or from the cache manager to the clone virtual disk file.