Abstract: Techniques for implementing data plane isolation for VM mobility operations are provided. In one set of embodiments, these techniques include creating a virtual network path between a source host system and a destination host system participating in a VM mobility operation, which allows the host systems to exchange data for carrying out the operation without exposing their physical IP addresses to each other and without requiring the use of intermediate proxies. In certain embodiments, the virtual network path can be dynamically established upon initiation of the VM mobility operation and dynamically rolled back upon operation completion, thereby reducing the overhead of virtual path management.

Abstract: In one set of embodiments, during an initial pre-copying phase, copies of the virtual disks of a VM or VM template can be distributed across one or more datastores, prior to the start of any cloning. This effectively seeds each datastore with a disk pool comprising a certain number of copies of the VM/VM template's virtual disks. Then, at the time of receiving a user request to create k clones from the VM/VM template, up to k copies of the VM/VM template's virtual disks that already reside in the disk pools of one or more target datastores can be moved from those disk pools to the clones' home folders on the target datastores, thereby reducing or eliminating the need to create brand new copies of the virtual disks on demand.