Hi Andrei, CloudStack snapshots are currently best thought off as back-ups rather than snapshots.
Although CloudStack leverages the hypervisor's native snapshot technology, it then copies/movies the hypervisor level snapshot to secondary storage. CloudStack doesn't declare the snapshot task finished until the snapshot has finished copying to secondary storage which can take a long time especially if you've got 100GB+ images. Given that you can't simply 'roll-back' a VM to its snapshot state, as I say, it's best to think of them as backups rather than snapshots. Regards, Paul Angus S: +44 20 3603 0540 | M: +447711418784 paul.an...@shapeblue.com -----Original Message----- From: Andrei Mikhailovsky [mailto:and...@arhont.com] Sent: 30 January 2013 17:25 To: cloudstack-users@incubator.apache.org Subject: Slow snapshots with KVM Hello guys, I was wondering if there is a way to speed up the creation of snapshots in CS + KVM? It seems that every time the snapshot is created an entire vm disk image is copied over from primary to secondary storage which could take ages if your images are 100GB+. I remember that taking images in vmware / xenserver takes minutes if not seconds. Does the problem relate to KVM or is it a CloudStack design issue of separating primary and secondary storage? Many thanks Andrei ShapeBlue provides a range of strategic and technical consulting and implementation services to help IT Service Providers and Enterprises to build a true IaaS compute cloud. ShapeBlue’s expertise, combined with CloudStack technology, allows IT Service Providers and Enterprises to deliver true, utility based, IaaS to the customer or end-user. ________________________________ This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Shape Blue Ltd. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. Shape Blue Ltd is a company incorporated in England & Wales.
