[Ovirt-devel] QCOW2 image support?

[Perry Myers]

Daire Byrne wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm aware that oVirt uses Cobbler to setup and configure new images but
> is it also possible to create and configure a VM image and then use it
> as a "golden" image to create multiple copies? I'm thinking along the
> lines of using QCOW2's ability to create new COW images (qemu-img
> create -b) but referencing the common read-only "golden" image. If this
> is not currently possible are there any plans for this kind of
> functionality? Using Cobbler and kickstart is nice and all but
> sometimes you just want to configure a VM image on your desktop machine
> (say) by hand and then be able to clone it many times instead of
> writing and maintaining kickstart scripts. Obviously Windows
> installations particularly benefit from this approach.

Cobbler can do this via the Cobbler image object.  We don't have support 
for 'golden' images in oVirt Server yet, but it is certainly on the 
roadmap.  Adding support for this should be relatively easy since most of 
the groundwork for adding this was done when we added support for using 
Cobbler ISO images.  (Patches welcome, as always!)

I also believe that libvirt functionality for snapshots would be required 
here as well, and I think that is already in libvirt so hopefully we 
should just be able to use that.  Probably the most challenging piece 
would be modifying the db model to track the snapshots.  (Scott you have 
any thoughts on this?)

> Also on an unrelated note is oVirt going to be part of the "Enterprise
> Virtualization Manager for Servers" mentioned in Redhat's recent press
> release?

oVirt is a project developing virtualization management technology on 
Fedora.  As some parts of Fedora feed into RHEL, some parts of oVirt may 
feed into RHEL virtualization in the future.

Thanks,

Perry

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