Patent ID: 8677358

Claim:
A method for remote access to a plurality of managed contexts, comprising: providing a hypervisor-resident, policy-based, virtual management agent running in a privileged context and configured to manage at least one host OS from outside said OS, said host OS comprising a virtual machine (VM) running on an underlying hardware-based device; providing a client hosted virtual desktop running within said underlying hardware-based device, said client hosted virtual desktop comprising said hypervisor, wherein said hypervisor is configured to support an administrative environment comprising a virtual management appliance, said virtual management appliance comprising said virtual management agent, a virtual relay, and a virtual management platform, said hypervisor also configured to support at least one virtual machine having a respective virtual machine agent; providing a parent relay configured for inspection, wherein said virtual management platform interfaces with said hypervisor to allow inspection of said hardware-based device, and wherein said virtual management platform interfaces with said hypervisor to allow management of the hardware-based device; and further comprising using said virtual management agent for any of: connecting to a VM that does not have network access; connecting to an administrative environment in which an administrative agent is running; connecting to any VM hosted by said hypervisor, even if said VM does not have an agent running on it; and connecting to a VM without installing any software inside said VM.