LinuxCon/CloudOpen2014, Düsseldorf talk/demo proposal
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Title
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An update (and a demo) on techniques to manage libvirt/QEMU-based
virtual machine snapshots and disk image chains


Abstract
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Managing QEMU overlay-based virtual machine snapshots can become
cumbersome over a period of time. With each new snapshot, a new QCOW2
overlay file is created -- this can become an overhead of tracking
multiple disk image files.  Understanding the ability to manage multiple
disk image chains efficiently will help lower this overhead.

This talk aims to explore some of the recent improvements in QEMU and
libvirt projects that address this need of advanced disk image
management. More specifically, we'll discuss -- shortening disk image
chains, snapshot merging, live backup of entire disk image chain,
gracefully reverting and deleting snapshots. We'll also see how some
of these underlying concepts are used in higher-layer projects like
OpenStack to create and manage snapshots. This session also includes a
demonstration of some the snapshot management techniques discussed.

Lastly, a quick overview of what's upcoming.

Demo: https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/virt/lcco-2014/examples/

This topic was last discussed[1] at LinuxCon Europe in Barcelona,
2012. It can be considered an update to that.

  [1] http://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/virt/lc-2012/lceu-2012-virt-snapshots-kashyap-chamarthy.pdf