Patent ID: 8230155

Claim:
A computer system comprising: one or more processors; system physical memory, accessible by the one or more processors; and a hypervisor stored in the system physical memory and executable on the one or more processors, and a first virtual machine stored in the system physical memory, the first virtual machine having a virtualization-aware module, the virtualization-aware module being executable on the one or more processors to: receive a range of virtual memory addresses; determine, independent of the hypervisor, whether at least one of the virtual memory addresses of the range of virtual memory addresses points to a non-resident portion of system physical memory, wherein the non-resident portion of the system physical memory is sharable with at least a second virtual machine stored in the system physical memory; responsive to determining that at least one of the virtual memory addresses points to a non-resident portion of system physical memory, transmit a request to the hypervisor to back the non-resident portion of system physical memory, and receive a message from the hypervisor indicating the non-resident portion of system physical memory has been backed; and transmit the range of virtual memory addresses responsive to, at least one of, determining that at least none of the virtual memory addresses points to a non-resident portion of system physical memory or receiving the message from the hypervisor.