A memory appliance may be provided comprising a processor, a communication interface, a memory, and a region access unit. The memory may be configured in an address space addressable by the processor. The communication interface may be configured to provide the client access to the region of the memory via client-side memory access before initialization of all of the region. A method to create a virtual copy of memory accessible by client-side memory access is also provided. A system may be provided that memory maps at least a portion of a file to a memory region, wherein a virtual address addressable is generated, and the at least a portion of file is accessible through the memory region at the virtual address. The virtual address may be registered with the communication interface, where registration of the virtual address provides client-side memory access to the memory region.