Netapp, Inc.

Network Appliance, Inc.

Timothy J Clayton-Luce

Arthur F Lent

Peter M Morrissette

Umesh Betahalli Venkatesh

Geeta Gokhale

Geeta Parag Gokhale

Umesh Venkatesh

Described herein are systems and methods for storage and deployment of VMs in a virtual server environment. A VM deployment module executing on a server may produce VM container objects representing VMs, a VM container object comprising VM data describing a VM and vdisk configuration data. The VM deployment module may also later produce VMs on a server using the VM container objects. The VM deployment module may do so by producing a vdisk from a VM container object, the vdisk comprising the VM and vdisk configuration data. Rather than configuring the vdisk as typically done to make the vdisk useable to the server, the vdisk configuration data is used to make the vdisk useable and the VM data on the vdisk immediately accessible to the server. As such, the VM data may be immediately read to produce a VM on the server, thus providing rapid deployment of VMs.

System and method for storage and deployment of virtual machines in a virtual server environment

A method and system are introduced to enable an application in a virtualized environment to communicate with multiple types of virtual servers (e.g., VMware ESX server, Microsoft Virtual Server, etc.), yet without making any source code change to the application. An interface is provided so that an application (e.g., a storage management application) running in a virtual machine is able to communicate with the underlying virtual server to receive information regarding some physical hardware that are not virtualized by the virtual server. For example, such physical hardware may be an iSCSI Host Bus Adapter (iSCSI HBA) or a Fiber Channel Protocol Host Bus Adapter (Fcp HBA). After receiving such information, the application can access the physical hardware to provide services to other applications, such as storage management services.

Method and system for enabling an application in a virtualized environment to communicate with multiple types of virtual servers

A system and method to facilitate the process of creating end to end storage from a network storage controller to one or more hosts is described. A storage controller management engine provides the network storage controller with configuration information, provisions storage on the network storage controller as one or more logical units, and maps a host to the one or more logical units, to create end to end storage from the network storage controller to the host in a highly automated and user-friendly manner.

Method and procedure for creating end to end storage from controller to host

Embodiments described are generally directed to a system and method for providing virtualized hardware resources within a virtual execution environment. In one embodiment, it is determined whether an operating system (OS) is a guest OS running within a virtual execution environment of a host platform. If an OS is determined to be a guest OS within a virtual execution environment, a virtual driver is provided for the virtual execution to fetch host hardware initiator information from a host server via a virtualization layer. In one embodiment, no corresponding guest driver is available to the virtual execution environment. In one embodiment, the virtualization layer provides virtualized hardware resources, including the virtual driver, for a virtual execution environment. Using the host hardware initiator information, in one embodiment, one or more virtual storage devices may be created within the host attached storage of the host platform. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Growing community of inventors

Raleigh, NC, United States of America

Timothy J Clayton-Luce