Patent ID: 8151263

Claim:
A real-time cloning method for a virtual machine, said method comprising: running said virtual machine; creating a clone of said virtual machine while said virtual machine continues to run, said creating including: quiesceing said virtual machine; taking a snapshot of a state of said virtual machine while said virtual machine continues to run, wherein said first snapshot excludes the state of said virtual machine's main memory; and creating a copy of said snapshot; restoring said clone using said copy of said snapshot; renaming said virtual machine's main memory to a memory-image file of said snapshot; creating a first file to represent a first guest memory in said virtual machine as said virtual machine continues to execute; populating said first file with demand paging and prefetching from said memory-image file; creating a second file to represent a second guest memory for said clone; and populating said second file with demand paging and prefetching from said memory-image file.