Hi,
We encountered a performance issue when creating a volume for a running VM and we'd like to share the info with you. The root cause of the issue is in our code but we found a workaround that relies on qemu-img create undocumented behavior.
During our tests, we found that in order to create a volume with a backing file, the baking file has to be valid and accessible. This requires us to activate the entire chain before creating the volume, and deactivate the chain after the operation completes. Activating and deactivating the chain are expensive operations that we prefer to avoid when possible. Below is the command we use to create volumes:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o compat=1.1 -b 8a28cda2-548d-47da-bbba-faa81284f6ba -F raw /rhev/data-center/e6b272af-84cb-43fc-ae5b-7fe18bc469a2/f47c980a-fd76-44a9-8b78-00d3ab2ffd2f/images/2ff0a3c0-f145-4f83-b668-fc0c39ba191f/d3b69657-892f-499c-9ac3-9c443ead7d9b 1073741824
We also found that when providing the size and the backing format for qemu, qemu doesn't open the backing chain, and in this case we don't have to activate/deactivate the entire chain - exactly the behavior we wish to have.
We we'd like to get your confirmation of the above behavior as it isn't documented, and whether it can be documented.
In addition, we are aware of
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1213786, where a -u (unsafe) option is planned to be added (see comment #4 in the BZ). Can you please confirm that once that support is released, it won't break existing, i.e. code that provides size and backing format assuming that "unsafe" create is supported?