VirtSync
VirtSync is an rsync-like command line tool for synchronizing large, sparse, virtual machine disk images.
Why use sparse virtual machine disk images?
Using sparse files for virtual machine disk images can result in huge space savings. A 100GB VM disk, which is 5% full will only use 5GB of disk space as a sparse file, but 100GB if the disk image file is not sparse.
What does VirtSync do that rsync can't?
rsync does not allow the 'sparse' and 'inplace' switches to be used together. You must choose between:
- sparse - this allows large-sized files to occupy a small amount of disk space, but the file is wastefully rewritten to disk each time.
- in-place - the synchronized file is efficiently updated in-place, but will occupy a large amount of disk space.
VirtSync gives you both features at the same time, for a $50 per server, one-off, licensing fee. Updates included, forever, and a money-back guarantee.