Virtual Machine Image Server Segment Deduplication
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Solution Overview
Problem
The challenge of efficiently storing and managing large virtual machine image files, particularly in large organizations where multiple users maintain their own image libraries, leading to significant storage space requirements and difficulties in maintaining and updating these files efficiently.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for a virtual machine image server that compiles and manages a repository of virtual machine image files, allowing clients to select and download only the necessary segments, using differential compression to update and store files efficiently, thereby reducing storage needs and network bandwidth.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple users maintain their own virtual machine image libraries independently, then each user has full control and flexibility over their images, but storage space requirements increase significantly due to duplication of common operating system or application code
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments virtual machine image files into multiple chunks or blocks, allowing the storage system to identify and share common segments across multiple users while maintaining user-specific segments. This segmentation enables differential storage where only unique portions are stored separately for each user, significantly reducing overall storage requirements while preserving user control over their virtual machine environments
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges common segments from multiple virtual machine image files into a shared storage pool that can be accessed by multiple users. By combining and deduplicating common operating system or application code segments across different user libraries, the system reduces total storage consumption while allowing each user to maintain their own virtual machine configurations and unique segments
2Reliability
If complete virtual machine image files are transferred to clients, then clients have full functionality, but network bandwidth consumption increases and transfer time is extended
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and identifies segments that already exist at the client's local storage before initiating a transfer. By taking out the common segments that are already present and only transferring the differential segments that are missing or need updating, the system maintains full functionality of virtual machine images while significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption and transfer time
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary comparison between the server's image segments and the client's existing segments before initiating file transfer. This preliminary action identifies which segments are already present at the client, allowing the system to prepare a differential transfer plan that only includes necessary segments, thereby reducing transfer time and network usage while ensuring complete functionality
3Loss of energy
If differential compression is used to reduce data transfer, then network bandwidth usage decreases, but the complexity of comparing and identifying different segments increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent generates and stores checksums or hash values for each segment during the preliminary phase, before actual comparison is needed. This preliminary computation of segment identifiers simplifies the subsequent differential compression process by allowing direct comparison of these identifiers rather than performing complex byte-by-byte analysis of entire segments, thereby reducing the computational complexity while maintaining effective bandwidth reduction
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces checksums or hash values as intermediary representations of segment content. These intermediary values serve as simplified proxies for actual segment data, allowing the system to perform efficient comparisons to identify differential segments without directly analyzing the full complexity of the underlying data, thus reducing network bandwidth usage while managing comparison complexity through this intermediary layer
Data Source
AI summary
Virtual machine image files are stored in a virtual machine storage by a virtual machine image file server. Users at virtual machine clients connect to the virtual machine image file server and are presented with a list of the available virtual machine image files in a virtual machine image store. Users of the virtual machine clients are able to select the desired virtual machine image, and begin executing in the selected virtual machine environment as soon as the selected virtual machine image file begins downloading to the client computer. When a virtual machine image file is selected for storage it is divided into several segments. Each segment is compared with segments of previously stored virtual machine image files already in storage. For example, only non-duplicate segments are stored.