[Xen-users] Re: Having Windows XP HVM on qcow diskfile and snapshots.

[Geert Janssens <info@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 21 May 2009, Arun Sharma wrote:
> Hello Geert Janssens
>
> Its related to the issue which you have faced for Winxp HVM on xen using
> qcow.
>
> http://markmail.org/message/2s34goosaqmd4vuz#query:+page:1+mid:3ufh6ev4oz4n
>7opf+state:results
>
> Have you found any solution till now ? Since i am also facing the same
> problem.
>
No, I never managed to fix this problem in an optimal way. I was time-limited, 
so I went for a less optimal solution: I use completely separate (qcow) disk 
images for each VM. I consider one of these disk images the master and I keep 
a backup of it. Whenever I have to perform significant system updates, I do 
them first on this master. If the updates are ok, I simply replace all the 
other disk images with the new master.

I can get around with this because:
* The Guest machines are all configured to get their IP address via dhcp, and 
each guest config has it's own unique MAC address. So each guest will appear 
on their own ip address
* There is no data on the guest disk images (only OS and applications). All 
variable data is accessible via samba shares. So I don't delete anything 
valuable by overwriting a disk image with the new master.

It works ok, but I'm using a lot of wasted diskspace. I still intend to try 
and setup an LVM based disk image and use LVM snapshots for each guest. This 
would give me essentially the same thing but with less wasted diskspace. The 
experiment will have to wait until I find some time for it though.

Regards,

Geert
-- 
Kobalt W.I.T.
Web & Information Technology
Brusselsesteenweg 152
1850 Grimbergen

Tel  : +32 479 339 655
Email: info@xxxxxxxxxxxx


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