From: Fiona Ebner <f.ebner@proxmox.com>
To: pve-devel@lists.proxmox.com
Subject: [PATCH v2 docs] storage: note that qcow2 internal snapshots are inefficient
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:06:25 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260323110642.51984-1-f.ebner@proxmox.com> (raw)
It's a commonly reported issue, often also in the enterprise support,
that taking or removing snapshots of large qcow2 files on file-based
network storages can take a very long time. Add a note about this
limitation.
Signed-off-by: Fiona Ebner <f.ebner@proxmox.com>
---
Changes in v2:
* add recommendation about doing the operations offline
pvesm.adoc | 6 ++++++
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
diff --git a/pvesm.adoc b/pvesm.adoc
index c634f6b..97feca0 100644
--- a/pvesm.adoc
+++ b/pvesm.adoc
@@ -88,6 +88,12 @@ block device functionality.
^2^: On file based storages, snapshots are possible with the 'qcow2' format,
either using the internal snapshot function, or snapshots as volume chains^4^.
+Creating and deleting internal 'qcow2' snapshots will block a running VM and
+is not an efficient operation. The performance is particularly bad with network
+storages like NFS. On some setups and for large disks (multiple hundred GiB or
+TiB sized), these operations may take several minutes, or in extreme cases, even
+hours. If your setup is affected, create and remove snapshots while the VM is
+shut down, expecting a long task duration.
^3^: It is possible to use LVM on top of an iSCSI or FC-based storage.
That way you get a `shared` LVM storage
--
2.47.3
next reply other threads:[~2026-03-23 11:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-03-23 11:06 Fiona Ebner [this message]
2026-03-23 11:59 ` Maximiliano Sandoval
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20260323110642.51984-1-f.ebner@proxmox.com \
--to=f.ebner@proxmox.com \
--cc=pve-devel@lists.proxmox.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox