SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR VIRTUAL MACHINE CONVERSION

• US 20150058382A1
• Filed: 08/21/2013
• Published: 02/26/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 08/21/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: SimpliVity Corporation (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Inventors: King, James E. III, St. Laurent, Jesse
• Granted Patent: US 9,043,576 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/823
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/116 Details of conversion of file system types or formats
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/185 Hierarchical storage management [HSM] systems, e.g. file migration or policies thereof details of archiving G06F16/11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/188 Virtual file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

System and method for conversion of virtual machine files without requiring copying of the virtual machine payload (data) from one location to another location. By eliminating this step, applicant'"'"'s invention significantly enhances the efficiency of the conversion process. In one embodiment, a file system or storage system provides indirections to locations of data elements stored on a persistent storage media. A source virtual machine file includes hypervisor metadata (HM) data elements in one hypervisor file format, and virtual machine payload (VMP) data elements. The source virtual machine file is converted by transforming the HM data elements of the source file to create destination HM data elements in a destination hypervisor format different from the source hypervisor format; maintaining the locations of the VMP data elements stored on the persistent storage media constant during the conversion from source to destination file formats without reading or writing the VMP data elements; and creating indirections to reference the destination HM data elements in the destination hypervisor format and the existing stored VMP data elements.

Claims

1. A method of converting virtual machine files comprising:

in a file system or storage system providing indirections to locations of data elements stored on a persistent storage media;

converting a source virtual machine file comprising hypervisor metadata (HM) data elements in one hypervisor file format, and virtual machine payload (VMP) data elements, including steps of;

transforming the HM data elements of the source file to create destination HM data elements in a destination hypervisor format different from the source hypervisor format;

maintaining the locations of the VMP data elements stored on the persistent storage media constant during the conversion from source to destination file formats without reading or writing the VMP data elements; and

creating indirections to reference the destination HM data elements in the destination hypervisor format and the existing stored VMP data elements.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

removing the source HM data elements after creating the destination HM data elements.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the source HM data elements include directory, file and indirection data elements.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the source VM file is a source virtual disk VD file.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the source VM file is a virtual memory image file.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the method includes restoring the source VM file from backup storage for running the destination VM file on a hypervisor of the different format.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating the source VM file with the created indirections and renaming the updated source file in accordance with the different hypervisor format to create the destination VM file.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the method includes cloning the source VM file to a different hypervisor format and maintaining the source file.

9. A computer program embodied in a non-transitory machine readable storage device comprising program code means which, when executed by a processor, performs the steps of method claim 1.

10. The method of claim 1, implemented in one or more of digital electronic circuitry, computer hardware, firmware, a computer program in a non-transitory machine readable storage device, or combinations thereof.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising maintaining a location index of the file system for mapping data element names and physical locations of the data elements.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the location index further comprises reference counts for the data elements.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the names, location index and data elements comprise a file system.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the mapping is indexed by an offset into the content of the file, and comprises a linear list, a tree structure, or an indirection table.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the file system stores the data elements as objects in an object store located in the persistent storage media.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein each object has a globally unique name derived from the content of the object and used to access the object in the object store.

17. The method of claim 16, including adding, modifying or deleting an object of the file and generating a new file object name.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the object store contains an index of object names, object physical locations and object reference counts.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the object name comprises a hash digest of the object content.

20. A computer system for converting a virtual machine file from one hypervisor format to another hypervisor format, the system including a memory and a hardware processor in communication with the memory, the processor executing program instructions for converting the virtual machine file including steps of:

in a file system or storage system providing indirections to locations of data elements stored on a persistent storage media;

converting a source virtual machine file comprising hypervisor metadata (HM) data elements in one hypervisor file format, and virtual machine payload (VMP) data elements, including steps of;

transforming the HM data elements of the source file to create destination HM data elements in a destination hypervisor format different from the source hypervisor format;

maintaining the locations of the VMP data elements stored on the persistent storage media constant during the conversion from source to destination file formats without reading or writing the VMP data elements; and

creating indirections to reference the destination HM data elements in the destination hypervisor format and the existing stored VMP data elements.

21. A method of converting virtual machine files comprising:

in a file system or storage system where data and metadata are stored as objects, each object having a globally unique content name derived from the content of the object and used to access the object in the file system or the storage system;

converting a source virtual machine file comprising hypervisor metadata in one hypervisor file format, and payload data, including steps of;

transforming the hypervisor metadata of the source file to a different hypervisor file format to create destination hypervisor metadata;

maintaining the locations of the stored payload data constant during the conversion from source to destination file format without reading or writing the payload data; and

creating indirections for the destination hypervisor metadata and existing stored payload data.