Live-disk-backup-with-active-blockcommit

Efficient live disk backup with active blockcommit

Purpose: Perform efficient live disk backups using "active blockcommit".

"Active blockcommit" is a two phase operation: (1) once an external snapshot (which results in a qcow2 overlay that tracks the new writes from then on) is taken, the content from the overlay can be copied into its backing file (e.g. 'base'); then (2) pivot live QEMU to 'base'. All of this while the guest is running.

This is possible with versions: QEMU 2.1 (and above), libvirt-1.2.9 (and above).

Procedure

Start with a single disk image:

[base] (live QEMU)

List the current block device in use:

$ virsh domblklist vm1
Target     Source
------------------------------------------------
vda        /export/images/base.qcow2 

Create an external disk snapshot:

$ virsh snapshot-create-as --domain vm1 guest-state1 \
    --diskspec vda,file=/export/images/overlay1.qcow2 \
    --disk-only --atomic 

Now, the disk image chain is:

[base] <-- [overlay1] (live QEMU)

NOTE-1: Above, if you have QEMU guest agent installed in your virtual machine, try '--quiesce' option with virsh snapshot-create-as[. . .] to ensure you have a consistent disk state.

NOTE-2: Optionally, you can also supply '--no-metadata' option to tell libvirt to not track the snapshot metadata -- this is useful currently, at a later point when you decide to merge snapshot files, you have to explicitly clean the libvirt metadata (by invoking: virsh snapshot-delete vm1 --metadata [name|--current] -- repeat this as needed.)

Take a backup of the original disk in backround using your faviourite tool:

$ cp /export/images/base.img /export/images/copy.img

[or]

$ rsync -avh --progress /export/images/base.img \
        /export/images/copy.img

List the current block device in use, again. It can be noticed, 'overlay1.qcow2' is the current disk in use:

$ virsh domblklist vm1
Target     Source
------------------------------------------------
vda        /export/images/overlay.qcow2

Now that the backup is finished, perform active blockcommit by live mergning contents of 'overlay1' into base:

$ virsh blockcommit vm1 vda --active --verbose --pivot

List the current block device in use, again. It can be noticed, once the blockcommit operation is completed, the live QEMU is pivoted to the base image:

$ virsh domblklist vm1
Target     Source
------------------------------------------------
vda        /export/images/base.qcow2

The final resulting disk image chain (a single consolidated disk image):

[base] (live QEMU)