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Volodymyr Melnyk
Asked: 2024-08-21 15:51:08 +0800 CST

Removing a snapshot from a QCOW2 image on the fly

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Is that possible to delete a snapshot from a QCOW2 image without shutting down a virtual machine (QEMU+KVM)? Wouldn't running qemu-img snapshot -d ... break data consistency? If so, would that break consistency if one runs virsh pause ... before deleting a snapshot and then runs virsh resume ...? What do you think?

Thanks!

kvm-virtualization

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    When using libvirt, altering a qcow2 image via any tool outside virsh cli might and probably will corrupt the qcow2 image!

    qemu-img should only be used for images that are not in use (by another process or a running VM)

    To remove a snapshot from a running VM you can use the following procedure:

    List all snapshots:

    virsh snapshot-list <vm_name>

    Remove a snapshot:

    virsh snapshot-delete <vm_name> <snapshot_name>
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