Patent ID: 7856440

Claim:
A method for performing software operations on virtual machine images, comprising: receiving a virtual machine image that includes a mapping from a first file name to first file content; reformatting the virtual machine image by: creating a store that contains the first file content and that associates a content descriptor with the first file content, wherein the first file content can be reconstructed by using the content descriptor; and decoupling the mapping by creating an image manifest that maps the first file name to the content descriptor; and performing a software operation on the virtual machine image using the reformatted virtual machine image, wherein the virtual machine image is reconstructed by retrieving file content from the store that corresponds to content descriptors in the image manifest and building a disk image of the virtual machine image in a format that runs under a hypervisor, wherein the disk image is built by converting the mapping from file names to file content in the image manifest and the store to a mapping in a file system format that is used by the hypervisor.