Patent ID: 7536525

Claim:
A method for cloning a virtual machine from a source system to a target system in an information handling system, comprising: freezing writes to a storage file having storage blocks of an original virtual machine residing on a distributed network such that subsequent writes create new storage blocks for the original virtual machine, the distributed network using a first pointer to designate the location of the original virtual machine within a shared storage associated with the distributed network; freezing writes to a memory content for the original virtual machine such that subsequent writes to the frozen memory content are stored in buffers, wherein freezing writes to the memory content includes freezing all levels of memory starting with a slowest level of memory and finishing with a fastest level of memory; copying the frozen memory content including processor state and input/output state onto the target system wherein the copied memory content creates a clone of the original virtual machine; unfreezing the memory content of the original virtual machine by merging the writes stored in the buffers with the frozen memory content; unfreezing the writes to the storage file such that the original virtual machine and the clone both access the storage file; configuring the clone of the virtual machine based on unique characteristics for the clone of the original virtual machine; creating a second pointer, the second pointer designating the location of the clone of the original virtual machine within the shared storage of the distributed network; and creating a new storage block for any subsequent writes to the storage file whereby the new storage block is unique to the virtual machine causing the subsequent writes to the storage file.