Patent ID: 7721138

Claim:
A method of migrating a server, the method comprising: creating a block-based image of a storage device of a first server, the image comprising a bitmap; during execution of a boot loader on a second server, starting an initialization application that restores blocks of an operating system data from the image to a storage device of the second server required to start the second server under the control of the operating system; analyzing a hardware configuration of the second server; modifying on the storage device of the second server, hardware support software of the operating system based on the analyzed hardware configuration to enable the operating system to interface to hardware devices of the second server; partially using the image data as the local drive data of the second server; running the second server under the control of the operating system using the image data, restored blocks of the operating system data and the modified operating system data; and restoring unaltered portions of remaining data from the image while running the second server, wherein the unaltered portions of remaining data from the image are restored based on marked sections of the bitmap, and wherein the boot loader is executed while the first server is hot-migrated on-the-fly and the second server is started during the hot-migration.