I have used virsh snapshot-create-as <VM name> <snapshot name> "<snapshot description>" --diskspec "vda,snapshot=external,file=/path/to/external-snapshot" --disk-only --atomic to create an external snapshot of a running VM. I followed it with virsh blockpull <VM name> --path /path/to/external-snapshot and monitored it until done. I confirmed it with qemu-img info /path/to/external-snapshot which shows no backing store. However, when I do grep {/etc,/run}/libvirt/qemu/<VM name>.xml the xml for the VM still shows a backing store in the /run/... definition (but not in the /etc/... definition, my understanding is that the /etc/... definition won't be updated until the VM is shut down): <disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/> <source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/external-snapshot.qcow2'/> <backingStore type='file' index='1'> <format type='qcow2'/> <source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/original-image-file.qcow'/> <backingStore/> </backingStore> <target dev='hda' bus='ide'/> <alias name='ide0-0-0'/> <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='0'/> </disk> This is using libvirtd version 1.3.1 and qemu-img version 2.5.0. How do I resolve this situation? I don't want to have to rely on a backing store permanently. Thanks for any help or pointers.