qcow2

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VM image introspection

Posted on by jlim0930

Image formats RAW – Unstructured disk image format. QCOW2 – Disk format supported by QEMU emulator. ISO – Sector-by-sector copy of the data on a disk, stored in a binary file. AKI – Indicates an Amazon Kernel Image. AMI – Indicates an Amazon Machine Image. ARI – Indicates an Amazon RAMDisk Image. VDI – Disk format supported by VirtualBox virtual machine monitor and the QEMU emulator. VHD – Common disk format used by virtual machine monitors from VMWare, VirtualBox, and others. VMDK – Disk format supported by many common virtual machine monitors. Every image format comes with a set a… Continue Reading →

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shrink sparse qcow2 file

Posted on by jlim0930

When a vm’s been running for a while the sparse file will get bigger and bigger. If a cleanup has been done and the space usage is back down to minimal the sparse file will remain the largest size it was before. you can shrink the sparse file back down to minimal space usage by issuing the following. Please note that VM should be off during this. mv myqcow2file.qcow2 myqcow2file.qcow2.bak qemu-img convert -O qcow2 myqcow2file.qcow2.bak myqcow2file.qcow2 start up the VM and everything should be back to normal and the space of the sparse qcow2 file should be much less.