On 12/03/2013 02:41 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
Ah, but you already CAN do that. Libvirt external snapshots (since libvirt 1.0.5, or even earlier if you don't care about machine state but just disk state) coupled with qemu 1.3 or newer is perfectly able to create qcow2 chains such that you can do a backup of the snapshot without any downtime to the guest. Admittedly, keeping things optimal so that the qcow2 chain doesn't grow without bounds is a bit harder problem, and qemu 1.7 has added some new functionality not yet integrated into libvirt to make life easier for taking snapshots without having to track the cleanup efforts.
Excellent to hear!
Where can I find out more about how to handle cleanup? I don't need an automatic backup process requiring manual cleanup.
This wiki page has captured some discussions from this list regarding the matter (unfortunately not organized the best at the moment, but may have what you need...) http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/I_created_an_external_snapshot%2C_but_libvirt_w... Or if you get stuck, and can't find an answer from searching the list archives, feel free to describe your specific scenario and I'm glad to help brainstorm what to try next. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org