[SOLVED] Thin provisioning

[blackpaw]

Something not covered very well in the docs, but from my reading of the forums - is Thin Provisioning *only* supported by VMDK format now, i.e RAW and qcow2 are always fat?

A nuisance for us - performance is not particulary an issue as our hardware is overkill for the number of concurrent vms we run, however being a dev/test lab we have a *lot* of VMs created but not running. Fat provisioning them all would kill our storage.

Also Backups - Will the new Live Backup work with VMDK disks stored on a NFS share?

 

[blackpaw]

Further to this - Live Snapshots are only support for qcow2? which can only be fat provisioned?

 

[tom]

do not mix backup and live snapshots

backup always works, snapshots not.

 

[tom]

Check http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/14461-Thin-Provisioning-QCOW2-Not-Working?p=77412#post77412

 

[blackpaw]

do not mix backup and live snapshots

backup always works, snapshots not.

I was referring to the following from your wiki:

http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Backup_and_Restore

"Starting with V2.3, a new KVM live backup technology is introduced to Proxmox VE."

You don't recommend using it?

 

[tom]

I was referring to the following from your wiki:

http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Backup_and_Restore

"Starting with V2.3, a new KVM live backup technology is introduced to Proxmox VE."

You don't recommend using it?

Backup works great, support all storage types. I just want to point out that live backups are something different that live snapshots.

 

[blackpaw]

Backup works great, support all storage types. I just want to point out that live backups are something different that live snapshots.

Quite - I presume live backups do not preserve memory etc like live snapshots do.

Also I presume, with live backups the disk is snapshotted (to preserve disk integrity) and then copied. When restored and started, as far as the VM is concerned its recovering from being force closed?

And this can be done with all disk types (raw, qcow2, vmdk) and all storage types (Directory, NFS etc)?

Thanks,

 

[tom]

Quite - I presume live backups do not preserve memory etc like live snapshots do.

yes.

Also I presume, with live backups the disk is snapshotted (to preserve disk integrity) and then copied. When restored and started, as far as the VM is concerned its recovering from being force closed?

yes.

And this can be done with all disk types (raw, qcow2, vmdk) and all storage types (Directory, NFS etc)?

Thanks,

yes.

 

[blackpaw]

Thanks Tom, much appreciated.