Hi, currently i use on all VM's qcow2-Images with zlib compression. If i do an Backup, the Backup-Image will be compressed with zstd Level 3 to shrink the image for transfering it over not so fast internet connections.
So, why not directly using zstd compression on the images. Are there any reason's not to do that ? As i always use virt-manager for administration, i patched qemu (V9.2.2) to create on default zstd compressed images (only 1 change in line 3525). So newly created images do have compression type zstd, which work's (qemi-img info). I see one unusual thing. If i do an qemi-img convert with compression_type=zstd the size of the converted image is much smaller than the original file while "qemu-img info" shows on both as compression type zstd. Do they use different compression levels, maybe ? If i now do an virsh backup-begin <domain>, the backup-Image does also has a bigger size than the original, while showing zstd as compression type (qemu-img info). If i convert it with the similar command as above, both converted images has nearly the same size. Even if i copy the smaller converted image to the original and boot the vm from the smaller image, the backup-image (after backup-begin) is bigger. So, i am confused. Are there any explanations about the different image sizes or what's going on here ? best regards Michael
