Patent ID: 8495512
Filing Date: 2013-07-23
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A hosting and storage system for hosting a plurality of virtual machines for a plurality of users and for storing images of the virtual machines, the system comprising: a plurality of nodes, each particular node comprising resources for hosting at least one user specified virtual machine, the resources comprising at least processing resources; on each of at least a subset of the plurality of nodes, a utility management module operating as a virtual machine using a first set of resources of the node, the utility management module for (i) creating an image of a virtual machine hosted on the node and (ii) streaming the image to a storage; and a system management module for creating a template file of a particular user-specified configuration of a plurality of virtual machines comprising at least a first virtual machine from a first node and a second virtual machine from a second node, the template file comprising (i) references to first and second images streamed to the storage for the first and second virtual machines in the particular user-specified configuration and (ii) definitions of connections between the first and second virtual machines as deployed on the first and second nodes.