Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/5] RFC: Efficient VM backup for qemu (v1)

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Dietmar Maurer <address@hidden> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Stefan Hajnoczi [mailto:address@hidden
>> Sent: Donnerstag, 22. November 2012 13:45
>> To: Dietmar Maurer
>> Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden
>> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/5] RFC: Efficient VM backup for qemu
>> (v1)
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 11:26:21AM +0000, Dietmar Maurer wrote:
>> > > Did you look at the VMDK "Stream-Optimized Compressed" subformat?
>> > >
>> > >
>> http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vddk/vmdk_50_technote.pdf?
>> > > src=vmdk
>> > >
>> > > It is a stream of compressed "grains" (data).  They are out-of-order
>> > > and each grain comes with the virtual disk lba where the data should
>> > > be visible to the guest.
>> > >
>> >
>> > What kind of license is applied to that specification?
>>
>> The document I linked came straight from Google Search and you don't need
>> to agree to anything to view it.  The document doesn't seem to impose
>> restrictions.  QEMU has supported the VMDK format and so have other open
>> source tools for a number of years.
>>
>> For anything more specific you could search VMware's website and/or check
>> with a lawyer.
>
> The documents says: VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed 
> at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents
>
> I simply do not have the time to check all those things, which make that 
> format unusable for me.

In think proxmox ships the QEMU vmdk functionality today?  In that
case you should check this :).

Stefan