I like the ability of VirtualBox to instantly create and restore snapshots and I was wondering, if it's possible to do similar things on the host machine.
First I looked at lvm
snapshots, but some digging showed that they have too many disadvantages compared to dynamically allocated images. For example:
- They're space-consuming. If you write 10% to a logical volume and then take a snapshot, the other 90% of that volume become unusable.
- Taking a snapshot is instant, but reverting to that snapshot is a lengthy operation.
- A snapshot cannot be protected from automatic invalidation, if you write too much.
On Windows 7 I successfully combined the ability to attach differencing .vhd images to host with the VirtualBox GUI to manage snapshots and am looking for a similar option for linux.