A storage management method and computer program serves as an intermediary between storage subsystems and a virtual machine manager, e.g., a hypervisor. The storage management provides a unified user interface for configuration and unifies handling virtual machine image storage/retrieval, as well as management of virtual disk volumes provided to the operating systems and applications within virtual machine images. The images including the virtualized storage along with the entire state of the virtual machine form snapshots that can be cloned, stored when taking a virtual machine off-line and loaded when the virtual machine is being brought on-line.