I would like to get a clear picture on external snapshots memory dump ( i.e. system-checkpoint) vs dumping the memory of the guest. I have created external snapshots which produces a disk file and a memory file. I am not able to use this memory file in any memory analysis tools, for instance volatility. However, the memory dump taken through "virsh dump" works just fine with such tools. 

What am I missing here? The memory dump generated through external snapshot seems to be compressed, compared to the one generated by virsh dump. Can I specify the memory dump format in the snapshot XML? 

Was reading through a couple of old threads in libvirt-users, haven't found anything conclusive. If this is a redundant query, guide me me to the thread. 

Thanks,

Tanmoy