diff --git a/source/adminguide/virtual_machines.rst b/source/adminguide/virtual_machines.rst index 545e44d20a..9280aefcc9 100644 --- a/source/adminguide/virtual_machines.rst +++ b/source/adminguide/virtual_machines.rst @@ -1265,6 +1265,8 @@ When the snapshotting is complete, the Instance is thawed. You can use this functionality on Instances with raw block storages (E.g. Ceph/SolidFire/Linstor). +.. _Disk-only-File-based-Storage-Instance-Snapshots-on-KVM: + Disk-only File-based Storage Instance Snapshot on KVM ----------------------------------------------------- @@ -1298,6 +1300,25 @@ Limitations on Instance Snapshots managed by CloudStack. Any Snapshots that you make directly on the hypervisor will not be tracked in CloudStack. +Pause During Live Instance Snapshots on KVM +------------------------------------------- + +When creating **Instance Snapshots with Memory**, CloudStack uses Libvirt’s +*domain snapshot* API to create an Internal Snapshot that includes Memory. +The guest’s memory state is written directly into the root volume’s QCOW2 file. +This causes the instance to pause for the duration of the memory dump. The pause +time is typically much longer than with VMware snapshots, but this is a limitation +with Internal Snapshots in Libvirt. + +**Instance Snapshots without Memory** has seen significant improvements since Cloudstack 4.21 with the +:ref:`Disk-only-File-based-Storage-Instance-Snapshots-on-KVM` feature for NFS and local storage. +Pre 4.21, the Instance would be frozen for the entire duration of the snapshot create operation. +Since 4.21, the Instance is only frozen during the checkpointing operation, which is significantly less. + +Users looking for the Instance Snapshot feature in KVM are recommended to use the +:ref:`Disk-only-File-based-Storage-Instance-Snapshots-on-KVM` feature, if the pause duration is a concern. +App consistent snapshots can be created by using the ``quiescevm`` parameter with pre and post-freeze hooks. +The Instance should have Qemu Guest Agent installed for this to work. Configuring Instance Snapshots ------------------------------