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Daniel P. Berrangé avatarDaniel P. Berrangé

qemu: make 'xz' image compression viable by using -3

For managed save we can choose between various compression
methods. I randomly tested the 'xz' program on a 8 GB guest
and was surprised to have to wait > 50 minutes for it to
finish compressing, with 'xz' burning 100% cpu for the
entire time. Despite the impressive compression, this is
completely useless in the real world as it is far too long
to wait to save the VM.

The 'xz' binary defaults to '-6' optimization level which
aims for high compression, with moderate memory usage,
at the expense of speed.

This change switches it to use the '-3' optimization level
which is documented as being the one that optimizes speed
at expense of compression. Even with this, it will still
outperform all the other options in terms of compression
level. It is a little less than x4 faster than '-6' which
means it starts to be a viable choice to use 'xz' for
people who really want best compression.

The test results on a 1 GB, fairly freshly booted VM are
as follows

format | save | restore size
=======+=======+=============
raw | 05s | 1s | 428 MB
lzop | 05s | 3s | 160 MB
gzip | 29s | 5s | 118 MB
bz2 | 54s | 22s | 114 MB
xz | 4m37s | 13s | 86 MB
xz -3 | 1m20s | 12s | 95 MB

Based on this we can say

* For moderate compression with no noticable loss in speed

=> use lzop

* For high compression with moderate loss in speed

=> use gzip

* For best compression with significant loss in speed

=> use xz

Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>

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