Patent ID: 8464257

Claim:
A method for supplying battery power to a virtualized storage environment having a storage controller with a first virtual machine designated as a virtual machine manager and a second virtual machine, wherein the virtual machine manager has loaded in a memory portion thereof an image of the second virtual machine, the method comprising: in response to a battery engaged event, the virtual machine manager shutting down all virtual machines in the storage controller except for the virtual machine manager and the second virtual machine; the virtual machine manager enabling the image of the second virtual machine to be shared with a new instance of the second virtual machine in such a way that the image of the second virtual machine does not have to be loaded into a memory portion of the new instance of the second virtual machine; the virtual machine manager creating the new instance of the second virtual machine; the second virtual machine shutting down hardware devices in the virtualized storage environment that are not needed for a cache memory backup operation of the storage controller; the second virtual machine setting hardware devices in the virtualized storage environment needed for a cache memory backup operation of the storage controller to low power mode; while the second virtual machine is setting the hardware devices needed for operation of the storage controller to low power mode, the new instance of the second virtual machine executing a backup specific start-of-day (SOD) initialization sequence; synchronizing the new instance of the second virtual machine with the second virtual machine in such a way that a cache memory portion of the virtualized storage environment is not concurrently accessed by the second virtual machine and the new instance of the second virtual machine; upon synchronization of the new instance of the second virtual machine with the second virtual machine, initiating a cache memory backup operation; and upon synchronization of the new instance of the second virtual machine with the second virtual machine, shutting down the second virtual machine.