Moving vm's with very old snapshots

[Gaprofittit]

Hi,

I have some very old ESX 3.0 hosts I have acquired with very old snapshots so deleting the snapshots isn't an option, I can't
clone since we are using vsphere 5, how would I move these without copying the snapshots also, do I just exclude the delta files and some other files?

Thanks,

Greg

[weinstein5]

I would say the easiest way would be to V2V the VMs using VMware Converter - otherwise you will have to commit the sanpshots to move the VM files themselves -

[a_p_]

... how would I move these without copying the snapshots also ...

From your last sentence, I think that there might be a misunderstanding regarding snapshots and how they work!? In VMware products, snapshots are used in a "snapshot chain". This means that each part of the chain (each .vmdk file) is important and used. If you e.g. only copy the base vmdk files without the snapshot vmdk files you will loose all data since the day the first snapshot was created!

To help you find out how to delete the snapshots the best way, please attach

• the latest vmware.log file
• the .vmx file
• the .vmsd file
• a list of all files in the VM's folder (showing names extensions, sizes and time stamps)

It's also important to know, how much free disk space you have on the datastore.

To understand how snapshots work, please take a look at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180

André