Using ubuntu natty narwhal installed today (2011-03-24) I tried to do a snapshot with the help of libvirt. Here are the results using natty version of qemu-kvm and libvirt and using presented slowdown packages.
root@koberec:~# time virsh snapshot-create 1 Domain snapshot 1300968929 created real 4m39.594s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.020s root@koberec:~# cd /storage/slowsave/ root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# dpkg -l | grep -E 'libvirt|qemu' ii libvirt-bin 0.8.8-1ubuntu5 the programs for the libvirt library ii libvirt0 0.8.8-1ubuntu5 library for interfacing with different virtualization systems ii qemu-common 0.14.0+noroms-0ubuntu3 qemu common functionality (bios, documentation, etc) ii qemu-kvm 0.14.0+noroms-0ubuntu3 Full virtualization on i386 and amd64 hardware root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# dpkg -r qemu-common qemu-kvm root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# dpkg -i qemu-common_0.12.5+noroms-0ubuntu7.2_all.deb qemu-kvm_0.12.5+noroms-0ubuntu7.2_amd64.deb root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# pkill kvm; sleep 5; service libvirt-bin restart root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# time virsh snapshot-create 1 Domain snapshot 1300969754 created real 2m22.055s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.010s root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# qemu-img snapshot -l /storage/debian.qcow2 | tail -n 1 8 1300969754 57M 2011-03-24 08:29:14 00:03:37.652 root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# virsh console 1 Connected to domain vm Escape character is ^] Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 debian ttyS0 debian login: root Password: Last login: Thu Mar 24 08:15:18 EDT 2011 on ttyS0 Linux debian 2.6.26-2-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Sep 16 15:56:38 UTC 2010 x86_64 The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law. debian:~# free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 561 39 521 0 4 16 -/+ buffers/cache: 19 542 Swap: 478 0 478 debian:~# root@koberec:/storage/slowsave# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/storage/emptyfile bs=1M count=40 40+0 records in 40+0 records out 41943040 bytes (42 MB) copied, 5.4184 s, 7.7 MB/s I am not sure if my measurements are relevant to anything in here, but I hope so. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/524447 Title: virsh save is very slow Status in libvirt virtualization API: Unknown Status in QEMU: Fix Released Status in “libvirt” package in Ubuntu: Invalid Status in “qemu-kvm” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in “libvirt” source package in Lucid: New Status in “qemu-kvm” source package in Lucid: In Progress Status in “libvirt” source package in Maverick: New Status in “qemu-kvm” source package in Maverick: In Progress Bug description: ================================== SRU Justification: 1. impact: 'qemu save' is slow 2. how addressed: a patch upstream fixes the case when a file does not announce when it is ready. 3. patch: see the patch in linked bzr trees 4. TEST CASE: see comment #4 for a specific recipe 5. regression potential: this patch only touches the vm save path. ================================== As reported here: http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir- list/2009-December/msg00203.html "virsh save" is very slow - it writes the image at around 1MB/sec on my test system. (I think I saw a bug report for this issue on Fedora's bugzilla, but I can't find it now...) Confirmed under Karmic.