Accessing virtual disk content of a virtual machine using a control virtual machine

• US 8,392,838 B2
• Filed: 01/27/2010
• Issued: 03/05/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/27/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vmware LLC (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: VMware, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chawla, Puneet, Chamcham, Jad
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Tuyetlien
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hassan, Rashedul
• Application Number:
  US12/694,368
• Publication Number:
  US 20110185292A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,133 Days
• Field of Search: 715/760, 715/738, 715/740, 715/741, 715/748, 718/1
• US Class Current: 715/748
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/452 Remote windowing, e.g. X-Window System, desktop virtualisation protocols for virtual reality H04L67/131
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5077 Logical partitioning of resources; Management or configuration of virtualized resources specific details on emulation or internal functioning of virtual machines G06F9/455

Abstract

Methods, systems, and techniques for facilitating access to content stored remotely, for example, as part of a virtual machine infrastructure or elsewhere in a networked environment, using a uniform mechanism are provided. Example embodiments provide an Enhanced Virtual Desktop Management Server/System with a Content Abstraction Layer which enables users to access their data stored as part of a virtual machine environment, or replicated otherwise on a network, using a generic API. The API can be incorporated into a web browser or other third party interface to provide access to the users'"'"' data without needing to remote a bitmap representation of a virtual desktop display. Accordingly, users can access their data, applications, and settings regardless of the type of access device and regardless of whether the corresponding virtual desktop is running in the data center, provisioned in the datacenter but running on a client device, or not running at all.

Claims

1. A method in a virtual desktop management server computing system, comprising:

receiving a request from an application executing on a client device, through an application programming interface (“

API”

) call, for user content stored on a virtual disk, the virtual disk associated with a non-running virtual desktop;

verifying that the received request is an authorized request;

causing, on behalf of the received request, a non-executing control virtual machine to be executed and a new connection session to be established between the virtual desktop management server computing system and the executing control virtual machine without causing a connection session to be established between the client device and the executing control virtual machine, the executing control virtual machine having an ability to access a physical datastore containing the virtual disk;

causing the connected control virtual machine to mount the virtual disk and to obtain the requested user content from the mounted virtual disk on behalf of the client device, without causing the virtual disk to be connected to the client device by remoting a virtual desktop to the client device;

receiving the obtained user content from the control virtual machine; and

returning the obtained user content in response to the request.

2. The method of claim 1, the returning the obtained user content in response to the request further comprising:

generating a view of the obtained user content; and

returning the generated view in response to the user request.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the generated view is a markup of the obtained user content displayable by a web-browser on the client device.

4. The method of claim 1, the client device having an associated form factor, the returning the obtained user content in response to the request further comprising:

returning the obtained user content such that the returned content is usable by a client-side viewer application that is tailored for displaying the returned content appropriate to the form factor of the client device, the viewer application having no knowledge of location of the requested user content.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the control virtual machine is associated with a hypervisor executing on a physical machine that is communicatively coupled to the datastore containing the virtual disk.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the connection session is established with the control virtual machine by requesting a virtual machine management server to initiate a connection with the control virtual machine.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the causing the connected control virtual machine to mount the virtual disk, further comprises:

causing the connected virtual machine to execute a virtual disk controller re-scan to discover and mount the virtual disk to a logical mounting point.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a subsequent request, through a second API call, for other user content from the virtual disk;

verifying that the received subsequent request is an authorized request;

causing the connected control virtual machine to obtain the other user content from the mounted virtual disk;

receiving the obtained other user content from the control virtual machine; and

returning the obtained other user content in response to the subsequent request.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the requested user content is a file stored on the virtual disk.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the requested user content is a listing of directory contents on the virtual disk.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the requested user content is an application stored on the virtual disk.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the request is received from a handheld computing device.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the request is received from a mobile telecommunications computing device.

14. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing logic instructions configured to control a computer processor in a virtual desktop management server computing system to perform a method comprising:

receiving a request for user content in the form of an API invocation;

determining a virtual disk that corresponds to the request;

verifying that the request is allowed access to the determined virtual disk;

using a virtual machine management system, causing, as part of processing the API invocation, a connection to be established between the virtual desktop management server computing system and a special virtual machine having communication access to a physical datastore associated with the virtual disk, without causing a connection to be established between a client device from which the request for user content is received and the special virtual machine;

causing the connected special virtual machine to gain access to the virtual disk and to obtain the requested user content from the virtual disk once access is gained, wherein the requested user content is obtained from the virtual disk on behalf of the client device, without causing the virtual disk to be connected to the client device by remoting a virtual desktop to the client device;

receiving the obtained user content from the connected special virtual machine; and

returning the obtained user content in response to the API invocation.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the special virtual machine is a control virtual machine associated with virtual machine system support software that has access to a datastore associated with the virtual disk.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 wherein the virtual machine system support software is a guest virtualization kernel running on a physical computing system.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 wherein the datastore is a network share, an enterprise data repository, or cloud storage.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the causing the connected special virtual machine to gain access to the virtual disk is performed by causing the connected special virtual machine to mount the virtual disk.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the causing the connected special virtual machine to gain access to the virtual disk is performed using a secure file transfer protocol to a network share.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the causing the connected special virtual machine to gain access to the virtual disk is performed by sending a message to a web server exposed by agent software of the special virtual machine.

21. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the requested user content is a standalone file.

22. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 21 wherein the standalone file contains an executable application.

23. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14 wherein the API invocation is at least one of a request to list a file in a folder, get file metadata, download a file, or upload a file.