Vmware, Inc.

Mohammed Junaid Ahmed

Jesse Pool

Ishan Banerjee

Preeti Agarwal

Nick Michael Ryan

Nishant Yadav

Valeriy Zhuravlev

Provided are techniques for encrypting a virtual disk of a virtual computing instance (VCI) while the VCI is online and still running using a mirror driver. In certain aspects a mirror driver is a filter running in an I/O stack used for accessing a virtual disk, such that the mirror driver receives I/Os destined to the virtual disk and mirrors those I/Os to the virtual disk and one or more additional virtual disks. The mirror driver begins copying data from an unencrypted source virtual disk to a destination virtual disk, and the data is encrypted as it is stored in the destination virtual disk, while the VCI is still online. During the copying, as new writes are issued to the unencrypted source virtual disk from the VCI, the mirror driver mirrors the writes to both the unencrypted source virtual disk and the destination virtual disk.

Online disk encryption using mirror driver

Systems and methods are described for encrypting a swap file in a computer system. The swap file can be encrypted by a background process executing on the computer system. Processing of paging swapping operations occurs independently and separately of the background encryption of the swap file. Processing a page swapping operation can include decrypting or encrypting data to be swapped involved in the paging operation depending on the paging operation and whether or not the data to be swapped is encrypted or not.

In-place encryption of a swap file on a host machine

One or more embodiments provide techniques for promoting a linked clone virtual machine to a full clone virtual machine. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving an instruction to promote the linked clone virtual machine to a full clone virtual machine. The method also includes creating a second base disk for the linked clone virtual machine. The method includes installing a mirror driver between the first delta disk and the second base disk. The method includes copying the contents of the first delta disk to the second base disk with the mirror driver. After the contents of the first delta disk have been copied to the second base disk, the method includes removing the mirror driver and operating the linked clone virtual machine as a full clone virtual machine on the second base disk.

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Mohammed Junaid Ahmed