Storage reservation pools for virtual infrastructure

Abstract

A method to allocate storage includes assigning a quota on space from a storage reservation pool, allocating an epoch specific storage space to a virtual disk, creating a memory map for the virtual disk to track used space. For every write to the virtual disk during an epoch, the method includes updating the memory map, determining if the used space is greater than a threshold of the epoch specific storage space based on the memory map. When the used space is greater than the threshold, the method includes predicting additional space for future writes to the virtual disk in the epoch, determining if the additional space is available from the storage reservation pool, and, when the additional space is available, increasing the epoch specific storage and proceeding with the write to the virtual disk.