Google Inc.

Sergey Khorun

Andrew Kadatch

Matthew S Harris

Carl Hamilton

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for virtual block storage. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a request to initialize a virtual machine, the virtual machine having an associated virtual block device; accessing a file map comprising a plurality of file map entries; determining file map entries corresponding to blocks of data allocated to the virtual block device and one or more files in which the blocks of data allocated to the virtual block device are stored; determining that a particular one of the blocks allocated to the virtual block device has been written to a new position not associated with the particular block in the file map; and updating the position associated with the particular block to the new position.

Virtual block devices

In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include receiving, at a computer system, a request to create a snapshot of a virtual storage device, wherein the virtual storage device virtually stores data at virtual addresses, the data being physically stored at a plurality of physical storage locations that are managed by an underlying storage system associated with virtual storage device. The methods can further include identifying, by the computer system, one or more regions of the virtual storage device that have been written to since a previous snapshot of the virtual storage device was created. The methods can additionally include generating a unique identifier for the requested snapshot; and creating the requested snapshot using the identified one more regions and the unique identifier.

Providing snapshots of virtual storage devices

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for managing resources in a computing system. For virtual hard disk drives supported by multiple physic hard disk drives over a network, artificial throttling of the disk access bandwidth is implemented, such that the resulting latency behavior of each virtual hard disk drive resembles the latency behavior of a corresponding physical hard disk drive emulated by the virtual hard disk drive. In various implementations, the artificial throttling simulates both characteristics of sequential access latencies and random access latencies on a physical hard drive.

Bandwidth throttling of virtual disks

In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include receiving, at a computer system, a request to create a snapshot of a virtual storage device, wherein the virtual storage device virtually stores data at virtual addresses, the data being physically stored at a plurality of physical storage locations that are managed by an underlying storage system associated with virtual storage device; the methods can further include identifying, by the computer system, one or more regions of the virtual storage device that have been written to since a previous snapshot of the virtual storage device was created; the methods can additionally include generating a unique identifier for the requested snapshot; and creating the requested snapshot using the identified one more regions and the unique identifier.

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Sergey Khorun