[sheepdog-users] qemu-img convert; vdi write and preallocation

[Liu Yuan]

On 03/23/2013 04:02 AM, Valerio Pachera wrote:
> Hi, correct me if I'm wrong:
> 
> 'qemu-img convert' will create a vdi with no preallocation.
> It doesn't matter if it's from a qcow2 or a raw file.
> There is no way to make it pre-allocated.
> 

Actually there is way, but preallocation is not well documented.

$ qemu-img create -o size=100M,preallocation=full sheepdog:vdi

> 'collie vdi write' do not create the vdi.
> I create a not preallocated disk and, when collie writes on it, it
> will copy all the "space" form the file it reads from (also the empty
> space).
> There is no way to "free" the empty space allocated on a vdi.
> 
> This is the vdi list from the cluster where I imported the 100G device
> (zimra_backup).
> There is also a previous "test" of 100M made by 'vdi write'  form a file.
> 
>   Name        Id    Size    Used  Shared    Creation time   VDI id  Copies  Tag
>   zimbra_backup     0  100 GB  100 GB  0.0 MB 2013-03-22 09:20
> 2e519     2
>   test         0  100 MB  100 MB  0.0 MB 2013-03-22 08:21   7c2b25
> 2
>   wheezy       0   10 GB  1.8 GB  0.0 MB 2013-03-20 17:02   9533ed
> 2
>   squeeze      0   10 GB  292 MB  1.5 GB 2013-03-21 11:21   a34c73     2
> 

The 'vdi write' isn't intelligent enough to detect all-zero chunks from
the file descriptor.

What we can do better is built-in this intelligent or add a new command
'vdi punch' similar to file systems 'punch hole' that punch zero chunks
from data store. Which one is better?

Thanks,
Yuan