[libvirt-users] Behavior of disk caching with qcow2 disks

Hello, I am running several virtualization servers with QEMU 1.4.x and libvirt 1.0.2 on Ubuntu 12.04 and am working on optimizing the cache= and aio= options for the virtual machines. These VM images are mostly qcow2, and are served both from a local ext4 filesystem (with data=ordered,barrier) and from an NFS mountpoint (with sync). The local filesystem sits on top of an md software RAID of SATA HDDs. I have read some conflicting information about which cache option is used by default. This documentation states that cache=writethrough is the default: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/liaat/liaatbpkvm... However this SuSE documentation claims that QEMU 1.2.x and newer allows the driver to select which cache mode, and it often defaults to cache=writeback: https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles11/book_kvm/data/sect1_1_chapter_b... Which is correct? How is the cache mode set by default (if cache= is not specified)? My second question is can cache=none be used safely on a local ext4 filesystem with no BBU? Since ext4 uses barriers, would writing to these qcow2 image files be safe? The kernel documentation about barriers states that "Write barriers enforce proper on-disk ordering of journal commits, making volatile disk write caches safe to use, at some performance penalty". Does this apply to qcow2 VM images? Thanks, Andrew Martin