Patent ID: 8490092

Claim:
A machine-implemented method for migrating a virtual machine, the machine-implemented method comprising: requesting, from a source host executing the virtual machine to a destination host, creation of a file share at the destination host; performing, by the source host, a storage migration of virtual machine files to the file share, all of the storage migration occurring while the virtual machine is executing at the source host; mirroring, by the source host as part of the storage migration, disk write operations by the virtual machine such that the disk write operations are performed on a source virtual machine file of the source host and on a corresponding destination virtual machine file in the file share at the destination host; performing, by the source host, a live migration of the virtual machine to the destination host, the mirroring being performed during at least a portion of the performing of the live migration, during a final stage of the live migration the execution of the virtual machine is stopped, or paused, on the source host, mirroring is canceled, the file share at the destination host is closed and the virtual machine is started on the destination host and is configured to use the migrated virtual machine files at the destination host; and releasing, by the source host, virtual machine resources after a successful completion of the live migration from the source host to the destination host.