Qcow2

wikipedia:qcow2 is a file format for disk image files used by QEMU. qcow2 support AES and multiple snapshots.

A qcow2 image file is organized in units of constant size, which are called (host) clusters. A cluster is the unit in which all allocations are done, both for actual guest data and for image metadata.

qcow2 internal snapshots are best avoided in favour of extenal snapshots.

Activities

• Extend LVM on qcow2 images
• Read about raw files and qcow2 differences: https://www.berrange.com/posts/2017/02/10/the-surprisingly-complicated-world-of-disk-image-sizes/

Related terms

• qemu-img info, qemu-img create, qemu-img convert
• qemu-system-x86_64
• guestmount command to mount qcow2 images
• .raw
• .vdi
• zlib
• /var/lib/libvirt/images/

See also

• qcow2, qemu-img convert
• qcow
• qemu-img: qemu-img info, qemu-img check, qemu-img resize, qemu-img create, qcow2, qemu-img rebase, qemu-img convert, qemu-img commit, qemu-img ammend
• KVM, Installation, QEMU, virsh, virtinst, libguestfs-tools, libvirt, qemu, Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), MacVTap, Virtio, oVirt, KVM services, KVM networking, KVM graphics, CPU, KVM on ARM

https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob_plain;f=docs/interop/qcow2.txt;hb=HEAD

https://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob_plain;f=docs/interop/qcow2.txt;hb=HEAD

https://www.berrange.com/posts/2017/02/10/the-surprisingly-complicated-world-of-disk-image-sizes/