How to snapshot a VM ?

cronos6

New Member
May 9, 2012
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I'm running KVM VM on Proxmox 2.1. I would like to take a snapshot from a VM and keep it. Then, I would like to delete or revert to the snapshot like we could do with VMware. Is-it possible ? How ? Should I choose special disk format : raw, qcow2 ?

I've tried "savevm" but it looks like it make a simple backup, I've tried "snapshot_blkdev" but I don't understand how to use it...

Thanks by advance
 
you could take a "backup now" snapshot lzo backup, and then restore it as another vm

qcow snapshotting is coming, i think, after ceph's storage (which has support for this)

Marco
 
Thanks for the info.
So, "real" VM snapshots are not available on Proxmox yet.
I did what you told me. It works fine but it looks more like a backup then a regular snapshot. Also, we only be able to restore on the powered off machin and I can't restore it to another machine "VMID" is locked.
Thanks
 
Maybe you can create a vm with qcow2 virtual disk type (the only one that supports the kind of snapshot you need), and when you want to work "on the snapshot" edit the VMID.conf file and add the kvm parameter "-snapshot" in args: (see man qm for details).
If it works (is just a guess), when you turn the VM off you loose all the modification, so is good for some testing but is different from a sort of "brench" you may be interested into instead.
You can only do it from proxmox shell, no web interface support for it.
Read the kvm documentation because now I'm away from my home PC and can't check the correct syntax or my notes.
Maybe this link can help, and have a look at "layered images" also that look promising:
http://blog.allanglesit.com/2011/03/linux-kvm-managing-disk-images/
With pure (not with proxmox) KVM on my debian workstation I often run the VM with snapshot flag just to test some installation or configuration upon a sort of "basic test VM", or when I'm forced to run Windows OS, that is unsafe by design (no, antivirus will not make it safe).
best regards
 
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