No, the right way to do this on Linux and FreeBSD is to use zfs with zfs send/receive. Creating snapshots and sending them is efficient enough to use it as the

No, the right way to do this on Linux and FreeBSD is to use zfs with zfs send/receive. Creating snapshots and sending them is efficient enough to use it as the underlying storage for moderately loaded databases and VMs. They are atomic and require zero downtime. They can be encrypted and resent to other machines. Cloning whole machines from them is easy and efficient.