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Good m/d/n guys, wanted to put idea through you before trying to implement this.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;font-size:14px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);clear:both;word-wrap:break-word;font-family:Arial,'Liberation Sans','DejaVu Sans',sans-serif;line-height:18px;text-align:left">
So afaik LVM snapshots basically don't take any "real" space on hard drives.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;font-size:14px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);clear:both;word-wrap:break-word;font-family:Arial,'Liberation Sans','DejaVu Sans',sans-serif;line-height:18px;text-align:left">
I'm using KVM virtualization on my hosts and let's say i create an LVM volume for my linux VM, then install it properly, shut it down and take LVM snapshot of it.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;font-size:14px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);clear:both;word-wrap:break-word;font-family:Arial,'Liberation Sans','DejaVu Sans',sans-serif;line-height:18px;text-align:left">
Basically i've just cloned it (LVM2 snapshots are r/w).</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;font-size:14px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);clear:both;word-wrap:break-word;font-family:Arial,'Liberation Sans','DejaVu Sans',sans-serif;line-height:18px;text-align:left">
I feed it to KVM and that's it? Can i snapshot this volume N number times and get N number of VMs that take zero actual space on actual hard drive?</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;font-size:14px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);clear:both;word-wrap:break-word;font-family:Arial,'Liberation Sans','DejaVu Sans',sans-serif;line-height:18px;text-align:left">
And when cloned VMs start writing, they will be actually writing only diffs from "master" VM. This looks like an interesting idea to manage a lot of "template" VMs while saving huge amounts of disk space.</p>
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Or maybe i'm just inventing the bicycle. What do you think? Is this possible?</p>