QCOW2 is a storage format for virtual machine disk images.
QCOW stands for
QEMU copy on write. The QCOW2 format decouples the physical storage layer from the virtual layer by adding a mapping between logical and physical blocks. Each logical block is mapped to its physical offset, which enables storage over-commitment and virtual machine snapshots, where each QCOW volume only represents changes made to an underlying disk image.
The initial mapping points all logical blocks to the offsets in the backing file or volume. When a virtual machine writes data to a QCOW2 volume after a snapshot, the relevant block is read from the backing volume, modified with the new information and written into a new snapshot QCOW2 volume. Then the map is updated to point to the new place.