Patent ID: 9098347
Filing Date: 2015-08-04
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: storing at least state data of a virtual machine in a first unit of network storage of a network storage system that is separate from a second unit of network storage that stores a virtual disk of the virtual machine, wherein the network storage system is configured to provide a level of virtualization for underlying physical units of storage contained within the network storage system and is selected from the group consisting of a storage area network (SAN) system and a network attached storage (NAS) system, wherein the first unit of network storage is configured to be accessible by a hypervisor but not accessible by guests of the virtual machines running on the hypervisor and wherein the second unit of network storage is configured to be accessible by guests of the virtual machine; receiving, from a virtual machine manager, a virtual machine management task comprising moving the virtual machine to a different hypervisor and the state data of the virtual machine to a different unit of network storage; and requesting, via invocation by the hypervisor of a storage application programming interface (API) of the network storage system, the network storage system to create a replica of state data of the virtual machine by storing the state data of the virtual machine to a third unit of network storage using data manipulation functionality of the network storage system; writing current state data of the virtual machine to the first unit of network storage; responsive to reaching an update limit, updating the replica on the third unit of network storage with the current state data from the first unit of network storage using the data manipulation functionality of the network storage system.