Virtual machine images as structured data: the mirage image library
Glenn Ammons, Vasanth Bala, Todd Mummert, Darrell Reimer, Xiaolan Zhang · 2011
both private and public, has created new problems in managing large collections of virtual-machine (VM) images. VM images must be kept up-to-date with security patches and scanned for malicious or improperly licensed software. Because images are bulky, attention must be paid to the latencies of deployment and capture. Large collections of VM images also present new opportunities which, while not completely realized today, do not exist with collections of physical machines. Users can search for images that contain the software they want, configured as they want it. Collections can be mined for patterns in order to answer questions like “which database management systems does our company use? ” Images can be compared with one another. This paper describes Mirage, an image library that addresses