Well, according to http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virDomainManagedSave domain will be suspended. After snapshotting there is new _create_domain call: if state == power_state.RUNNING: virt_dom.managedSave(0) ... snapshotting... finally: libvirt_utils.delete_snapshot(disk_path, snapshot_name) if state == power_state.RUNNING: self._create_domain(domain=virt_dom) So, Is this actually "live" snapshot right now? >> But qemu can also write the vm state outside of the backend image, which >> should be usable with all image backends. This can be exploited for saving VM states. There is blueprint for that: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/live-snapshots