[libvirt] [PATCH] Libvirt Snapshot API

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 12:31:07PM -0500, Philip Jameson wrote:
> A little while ago I submitted a patch to add a snapshot API, but 
> I was informed that it got somewhat lost in the list. I have attached 
> a patch that implements this API at least for the qemu driver, and
> it also added another function for screenshots, just because it 
> usually is nice to  get a view of the screen with the snapshot.

Could you resubmit the virDomainTakeScreenshot() code as a separate
patch. That is quite a straightforward  API addition, so we shouldn't
let snapshot discussions delay that.

> The snapshot functions just take names, as I figure it should be up
> to libvirt to figure out where the snapshots go. e.g. for qemu, they
> just get stored with the drive using qemu's built in facilities. If
> someone were using LVM, then that could be managed by libvirt, just
> like it does for qemu monitors and such. The 'list snapshots' just 
> returns a list of names for now, as that's all I needed, but I think
>  it would probably be best to add a struct that would be name/time.

I've been taking a look at what VMWare and VirtualBox expose in their
respective APIs for snapshotting

VMWare

 - There is a tree of snapshots. ie a snapshot can be against a
   previous snapshot, rather than the base image, and you can
   chain them together to arbitrary depth
 - Copy of the domain configuration
 - Creation time
 - Name
 - Description
 - Quiesced (ie whether the guest filesystem had been told to
   flush buffers & temporarily suspend I/O to get consistent state)
 - VM State (whether it was running, or off when snapshotted)
 - Current snapshot - the snapshot used for current execution


VirtualBox
 - There is a tree of  snapshots. The current impl does not allow
   full use of this, restricting to a single branch / chain.
 - UUID
 - Name
 - Description
 - Timestamp
 - Online. Whether it was running or off when snapshotted
 - Copy of domain configuration.
 - Current snapshot - the snapshot used for current execution


So this is all alot more advanced than current capabilities in either 
Xen or QEMU/KVM. To cope with the level of complexity there I think 
we need to go beyond a simple 'name' in the APIs, and have a real 
object + an XML schema to record the metadata.

> I don't know if it's of any use at the moment, but I needed these 
> functions implemented, so I figured I'd at least submit my changes



> +int                    virDomainTakeSnapshot   (virDomainPtr domain,
> +                                                const char *name);
> +int                    virDomainRestoreSnapshot(virDomainPtr domain,
> +                                                const char *name);
> +int                    virDomainDeleteSnapshot (virDomainPtr domain,
> +                                                const char *name);
> +int                    virDomainListSnapshots  (virDomainPtr domain,
> +                                                char** sslist, int listsize);

So thinking about things in terms of VMWare/VirtualBox capabilities, we
probably need to expand these APIs a little further to


   typedef struct _virDomainSnapshot virDomainSnapshot;

   /* Take a snapshot of the current VM state */
   virDomainSnapshotPtr virDomainTakeSnapshot(virDomainPtr domain,
                                              const char *name,
                                              unsigned int flags);

   /* Query all snapshots know for a VM */
   int virDomainListSnapshotNames(virDomainPtr domain,
                                  char** names, int nameslen);

   /* Get a handle to a named snapshot */
   virDomainSnapshotPtr virDomainSnapshotLookupByName(virDomainPtr domain,
                                                      const char *name);

   /* Set this snapshot as the current one for a domain, to be
      used next time domain is started */
   int virDomainSnapshotActivate(virDomainSnapshotPtr snapshot,
                                 unsigned int flags);

   /* Delete a snapshot */
   enum { 
       VIR_DOMAIN_SNAPSHOT_DELETE_MERGE,
       VIR_DOMAIN_SNAPSHOT_DELETE_DISCARD,
   };
   int virDomainSnapshotDelete(virDomainSnapshotPtr snapshot,
                               unsigned int flags);


For XML to describe the metadata, I think we want to try something
like

   <domainsnapshot>
      <name>XYZ</name>
      <creationdate>...</creationdate>
      <description>
         ....blah....
      </description>
      <state>RUNNING</state>
      <domain>
         <uuid>XXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXX</uuid>
      </domain>
      <parent>
        <name>ABC</name>
      </parent>
   </domainsnapshot>



Regards,
Daniel
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