[linux-lvm] Snapshots and disk re-use

Stuart D. Gathman stuart at bmsi.com
Wed Feb 23 18:05:45 UTC 2011


On Wed, 23 Feb 2011, Stuart D. Gathman wrote:

> So you're not worried about the security implication of leftovers in free
> space, and just want a base image to clone for new customers?
> 
> The logical thing to do is to keep the origin volume untouched (except 
> for upgrading now and then), and take a snapshot for each customer.
> Each snapshot would then be a new clone of the origin.  Unfortunately,
> large numbers of snapshots are inefficient for writes to new data,
> so you'd likely have to "dd" to an independent LV instead.  (This is being
> worked on, and there are 3rd party products like Zumastor that fix it now.)

Actually, if you never (or rarely) write to the origin, lots of snapshots
should be fine.  But every write to the origin will first copy the 
original origin data to every snapshot.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.




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