Hi,
currently i use on all VM's qcow2-Images with zlib compression. If i do an Backup, the
Backup-Image will
be compressed with zstd Level 3 to shrink the image for transfering it over not so fast
internet connections.
So, why not directly using zstd compression on the images. Are there any reason's not
to do that ?
As i always use virt-manager for administration, i patched qemu (V9.2.2) to create on
default zstd compressed images
(only 1 change in line 3525). So newly created images do have compression type zstd, which
work's (qemi-img info).
I see one unusual thing. If i do an qemi-img convert with compression_type=zstd the size
of the converted image
is much smaller than the original file while "qemu-img info" shows on both as
compression type zstd. Do they use
different compression levels, maybe ?
If i now do an virsh backup-begin <domain>, the backup-Image does also has a bigger
size than the original, while
showing zstd as compression type (qemu-img info). If i convert it with the similar command
as above, both converted images has
nearly the same size. Even if i copy the smaller converted image to the original and boot
the vm from the smaller
image, the backup-image (after backup-begin) is bigger.
So, i am confused. Are there any explanations about the different image sizes or
what's going on here ?
best regards
Michael