Patent ID: 7784049
Filing Date: 2010-08-24
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. In a data storage environment having a server in communication with a data storage system having physical data storage mapped to logical volumes, a method for providing a plurality of different virtual computing environments: (a) configuring the server as a virtual machine server including a plurality of virtual machines and a virtual kernel; wherein each virtual machine includes a configuration file so that each virtual machine can be booted separately by the virtual machine server with or from its mapped logical volumes; (b) storing a plurality of logical units in the data storage system, the logical units consisting of a plurality of first logical volumes associated with metadata in a first storage bank and a plurality of second logical volumes associated with basis data in a second bank wherein the logical units are assigned to virtual machines and wherein all IO writes are written only to the logical units containing a REDO log allowing other logical volumes to maintain the corresponding data; and (c) making first and second logical volumes selected from the first storage bank and the second storage bank available to the virtual machine server through a mirroring operation, wherein one or more second logical volumes associated with the basis data and being selected from the plurality of second logical volumes stored in the second storage bank are paired with a plurality of first logical volumes associated with the metadata from the first storage bank to create a plurality of different virtual computing environments and such that the same first logical volume of the basis data may be paired with different second logical volumes of metadata in the different virtual computing environments.