The sparse files are special files(please checkout the wiki pages) to conserve some diskspace and copy time.
The rsync --sparce does not take an advantage of it. It is trying to checksum whole virtual diskspace which is obviously zero filled.
If you "cp" file then "cp" will try to autodetect it otherwise your file willbe converted to regular file. You can also copy files with "tar -S ".
To check the size of actual vs virtual(sparse) you can use:
df -bsh filename vs  df -sh


Am 06.10.2016 11:34 vorm. schrieb "Nathanaël Blanchet" <blanchet@abes.fr>:

Hi all,

I didn't know this tool, after testing the original 40GB image size is reduced as expected to 2,9GB with du -sh, but transfer between servers continue to act as a 40GB image.

So if I understand virt-sparsify reduces the effective space on the local disk, but the disk is seen with its original size by other systems, and there is no advantage in transferring the image from one server to an other.

Please tell me if I'm wrong.

Le 29/09/2016 à 15:10, Kai Wagner a écrit :

Hey,

I don't wont to break into your discussion, but I also never heard about virt-sparsfiy and the sparse option for dd.

I tested it and it works like a charm. I converted a block device 65GB with dd sparse to 40GB raw image and afterwards I used virsh-sparsify to reduce the size down to 6.8GB into a qcow2 image file.

Thanks a lot for that hint.

Kai

Am 27.09.2016 um 15:17 schrieb Sven Achtelik:

No, I never came across this approach. I didn’t know about virt-sparsify.

 

I’ll look into that and give it a try.

 

Thank you

 

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Von: Yaniv Dary [mailto:ydary@redhat.com]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 27. September 2016 15:10
An: Sven Achtelik <Sven.Achtelik@mailpool.us>
Cc: Maton, Brett <matonb@ltresources.co.uk>; vasily.lamykin@MegaFon.ru; Ovirt Users <users@ovirt.org>
Betreff: Re: [ovirt-users] VM incremental backup

 

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?

 

 


Yaniv Dary
Technical Product Manager
Red Hat Israel Ltd.
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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

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+7 (926) 500-3308

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