As I see it you have two options:
- In backup use 'dd' with 'conv=sparse' (or similar tool that allows sparse).
- After backup use virt-sparsify [1] to reduce the size to the real used size prior to restore.

To make this extra efficient you can use virt-sparsify anyways after backup to make the file even smaller.
Have you considered this approach?

[1] http://libguestfs.org/virt-sparsify.1.html


Yaniv Dary
Technical Product Manager
Red Hat Israel Ltd.
34 Jerusalem Road
Building A, 4th floor
Ra'anana, Israel 4350109

Tel : +972 (9) 7692306
        8272306
Email: ydary@redhat.com
IRC : ydary

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Sven Achtelik <Sven.Achtelik@mailpool.us> wrote:

Hi Yaniv,

 

how can this be done with DD ? Since it doesn’t know if the block is free space ? I’ve been looking for such a solution for a long time now. Everything I could find out was that I have to use a utility that understands the FS and therefore knows where the free space is.  

 

Thank you,

 

Sven

Von: users-bounces@ovirt.org [mailto:users-bounces@ovirt.org] Im Auftrag von Yaniv Dary
Gesendet: Dienstag, 27. September 2016 14:38
An: Maton, Brett <matonb@ltresources.co.uk>
Cc: vasily.lamykin@MegaFon.ru; Ovirt Users <users@ovirt.org>
Betreff: Re: [ovirt-users] VM incremental backup

 

Full VM disk backup. If you use dd you can drop the 0 parts of the disk. 


Yaniv Dary
Technical Product Manager
Red Hat Israel Ltd.
34 Jerusalem Road
Building A, 4th floor
Ra'anana, Israel 4350109
 
Tel : +972 (9) 7692306
        8272306
Email: ydary@redhat.com
IRC : ydary

 

2016-09-27 15:27 GMT+03:00 Maton, Brett <matonb@ltresources.co.uk>:

Is there a preferred or recommended backup method in the meantime ?

 

Hello!

I would like to understand the existence of the possibility of incremental VM backups.

And if it is, the means by which it is achieved.

While I was only able to achieve a complete backup of the virtual machine (but it is a very large amount of information and time) by cloning a snapshot of the VM and export to data domain.

 

Ламыкин Василий

Старший инженер по эксплуатации сервисных платформ

Столичный ф-ал ПАО "МегаФон

 

+7 (926) 500-3308

МегаФон лого+знак РУС B2C

 

 


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