Patent ID: 7360034

Claim:
A method for maintaining a plurality of virtual servers within a server, comprising: partitioning resources of the server to establish an instance of each virtual server by allocating units of storage and network addresses of network interfaces of the server to each instance of the virtual server, and sharing an operating system and a file system of the server among all of the virtual servers, wherein a selected virtual server is established by storing external configuration information of the selected virtual server of the plurality of virtual servers in a global repository maintained on a storage device of the server, the external configuration information describing external resources assigned to a virtual server of the plurality of virtual servers, the external resources including the units of storage and the network addresses assigned to the selected virtual server, and storing internal configuration information of the selected virtual server of the plurality of virtual servers in a private repository, the private repository stored in the units of storage assigned to the virtual server, the internal configuration information used to control operation of the selected virtual server; enabling controlled access to the resources using logical boundary checks and security interpretations of those resources within the server by comparing configuration information of a unit of storage requested by a particular virtual server with the resources allocated to that particular virtual server; and providing a virtual server context structure including information pertaining to a security domain of the virtual server, the virtual server context structure stored in the internal configuration information.