libvirt users - Jul 2013 - best way to provide disk storage for vm without shared storage system

Hello. I'm very happy with libvirt and qemu, that great software!
(after some playing i want to create golang bindings to libvirt)..

Now i provide ext4 fs for qcow2 images (raid1 with two sata disks).
Now i don't need live migration (but may need it in feature).
What is the best way to provide disks to vm in case of performance,
ability to create backups (i don't want lvm snapshots)?

As i search from google more speed can take physical storage - lvm.
But may be QED or FVD can provide near lvm performance to me?

--
Vasiliy Tolstov,
e-mail: v.tolstov@selfip.ru
jabber: vase@selfip.ru

On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 05:31:44PM +0400, Vasiliy Tolstov
wrote:
> Now i provide ext4 fs for qcow2 images (raid1 with two sata disks).
> Now i don't need live migration (but may need it in feature).
> What is the best way to provide disks to vm in case of performance,
> ability to create backups (i don't want lvm snapshots)?
> 
> As i search from google more speed can take physical storage - lvm.
> But may be QED or FVD can provide near lvm performance to me?
"Best" really depends.  If you don't want to use LVM you could use
raw
image files (fast) and perform backups inside the guest just like on a
physical machine.

qcow2 has pretty good performance nowadays.  If you care about
performance then benchmark your workload to decide which configuration
best.  There is no single answer because it depends on your workload and
additional constraints (like no LVM).

Stefan