Patent ID: 8701106
Filing Date: 2014-04-15
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving, at a source storage location, a list of signatures per virtual machine image at a target storage location; identifying, at the source storage location, a plurality of virtual machine images to be transferred to the target storage location, the plurality of virtual machine images comprising images of different virtual machines being transferred from a source host associated with the source storage location to a destination host associated with the target storage location; computing signature values, at the source storage location, of a plurality of disk blocks that contain the plurality of virtual machine images to be transferred to the target storage location, each signature value corresponding to one of the disk blocks, the computed signature values being associated with base image indicators, each base image indicator specifying whether a respective disk block is part of a base image; comparing, at the source storage location, the computed signature values with signatures from the received list using the base image indicators to determine a plurality of differential disk blocks associated with the plurality of virtual machine images, each set of the plurality of differential disk blocks being associated with a distinct virtual machine image, wherein comparing the computed signature values comprises testing a set membership of each computed signature value in a set formed by the computed signature values; deduplicating the plurality of differential disk blocks at the source storage location to identify a subset of differential disk blocks that do not have identical signature values associated with virtual machine images, the deduplicating being performed across virtual machine images of different virtual machines being transferred from the source host to the destination host; and transferring the subset of differential disk blocks, that do not have identical signature values, from the source storage location to the target storage location over a network.