Patent ID: 8364639

Claim:
A method for generation of virtual snapshots comprising: (a) activating a Virtual Machine (VM) on a computer system; (b) acquiring VM context; (c) generating a virtual snapshot based on the VM context, the virtual snapshot including a state of the VM's disk at a particular moment in time for a history of the virtual snapshots, and a state of the VM's virtual CPU, including a state of its registers and flags at the particular moment in time; (d) adding the virtual snapshot to a virtual snapshot tree, wherein the virtual snapshot tree is viewable via a virtual snapshot image viewer that provides a Graphical User Interface for viewing the virtual snapshot tree and the history of the virtual snapshots representing the states of the VM's disk at prior moments in time and the states of the VM's virtual CPU, including the states of its registers and flags at the prior moments in time; (e) repeating steps (a)-(d) at least one more time; and (f) indicating properties of virtual snapshots from the virtual snapshot tree and differences between the properties of the virtual snapshots from the virtual snapshot tree.