Virsh Snapshots

virsh snapshot-create Create a snapshot from XML. See also: qemu-img and qemu-img info
virsh snapshot-create-as Create a snapshot from a set of args.
virsh snapshot-current Get or set the current snapshot
virsh snapshot-dumpxml VM_MACHINE_NAME SNAPSHOT_NAME Dump XML for a domain snapshot
virsh snapshot-edit edit XML for a snapshot
virsh snapshot-info snapshot information. (virsh snapshot-info --domain DOMAIN_NAME --snapshotname SNAPSHOT_NAME)
virsh snapshot-list VM_MACHINE_NAME List snapshots for a domain
virsh snapshot-parent Get the name of the parent of a snapshot
virsh snapshot-revert (Destructive action) revert a domain to a snapshot
virsh snapshot-delete Delete a domain snapshot

qcow2 internal snapshots are best avoided in favour of extenal snapshots. ^[1], they do not get much attention.^[2]

Libvirt Snapshot releated changelog[edit]

v5.6.0 (2019-08-05)
- qemu: Allow XML validation for snapshot creation

Add flag VIR_DOMAIN_SNAPSHOT_CREATE_VALIDATE to validate snapshot input XML. For virsh, users can use it as virsh snapshot-create --validate

v5.2.0 (2019-04-03)
- snapshots: Add support for topological listings

v5.1.0 (2019-03-04)
- External snapshot metadata redefinition is fixed

Attempting to use VIR_DOMAIN_SNAPSHOT_CREATE_REDEFINE to reinstate the metadata describing an external snapshot created earlier for an offline domain no longer fails.

v3.5.0 (2017-07-04)
- qemu: snapshot: retrieve image metadata from user provided files

Disk images of an external snapshot created with VIR_DOMAIN_SNAPSHOT_CREATE_REUSE_EXT flag specified would not be scanned for metadata after recent changes. The metadata is necessary to allow keeping relative paths between images when doing a block-commit.