Patent ID: 8364983

Claim:
At a management service in a computerized environment comprising one or more virtual machines and one or more virtual hard disks corresponding to each of the one or more virtual machines, a method of securely managing the one or more virtual machines on one or more physical hosts using one or more encryption keys, comprising the acts of: creating one or more virtual machines on the one or more physical hosts, wherein each of the one or more virtual machines comprises a unique ID, and is associated with the one or more virtual hard disks; associating an encryption key with one or more of the one or more virtual machine unique IDs; encrypting, using the encryption key, one or more of the one or more virtual hard disks for each of the one or more virtual machines associated with the encryption key; providing the encryption key to one or more hypervisor components that interface between the virtual machines and the associated one or more virtual hard disks, wherein the one or more hypervisor components provide read/write access of the one or more encrypted drives to the corresponding virtual machine using the provided encryption key, the one or more hypervisor components maintain a separate scope and execution environment for each of the one or more virtual machines such that each virtual machine has a separate identity and operates as though it has complete access to all available resources but has visibility only to what is assigned to it by the hypervisor; receiving one or more requests to move a virtual machine from one of the one or more physical hosts to another physical host, the virtual machine having one of the encrypted one or more virtual hard disks and a corresponding encryption key; and determining if the another physical host has a copy of the corresponding encryption key.