Re: [Xen-API] XCP: RFC: compressing VM exports by default

[Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This is possibly out of scope, but I think a really common use-case is to 
shuffle VHD files around.  Have you considered an output format that just moves 
the VHD from the backend directly into the VM export?

In the case of a non-VHD backend then the compressed stream form is good, but 
it seems a pity to duplicate the sparseness checking for the common (VHD on LVM 
or NFS) case.

Anil  


On 22 Jun 2010, at 07:08, Dave Scott <Dave.Scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> In XCP a VM "export" is a serialized VM, including metadata and usually raw 
> disk blocks. The format is a very simple tar file (really stream) with an XML 
> file at the front containing version information and metadata.
> 
> Unfortunately VM exports containing raw disk blocks can be very large and 
> their size makes them difficult to store and distribute over the network. I 
> propose to turn on compression by default by filtering the exports through 
> gzip and to auto-detect both compressed and uncompressed exports on import.
> 
> I've written up my proposal on the wiki:
> 
> http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Compressing_VM_exports
> 
> One implication is that new (compressed) exports will fail to import on older 
> servers. However (a) there's an easy workaround (gunzip); and (b) I think 
> being able to import an old (uncompressed) export on a new server is more 
> important than the other way around.
> 
> Comments appreciated!
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave
> 
> 
> 
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