vROPS Report Snapshots Older than X

[OsburnM]

Greetings all-- Please forgive me if this seems like a silly question.  We are new to vROPS (vROM?) and I'm working on trying to build a report that will show me a report of VMs with Snapshots over "x" days.  Does anyone know if this is possible?

I've seen and built ones that show will show diskspace used of a snapshot-- but nothing were I can simply have a report that says, "hey-- you've got a snapshot older than 7 days"...

Greatly appreciate any help here in advance.

Thanks!

[mark_j]

Yes, set the 'waste' area of the policy that applies to your VMs and Datastores to account for snapshots older than X days. Then create a view based on wasted disk space, and have a column/field for snapshot disk space.

The "Waste" capability is how you isolated snapshots based on duration. The age itself on the snapshot instantiations in v6.0.x is in UNIX time, which we cannot really interpret using SMs or otherwise... only vR Ops can apply the necessary logic to translate it to age.

[itajuve84]

Hi Mark.J,

Can you please explain how to enable and set the waste area on the policy?

In my policy, I have gone to Override Attributes and enabled both the State and KPI options for:

• Disk Space | Snapshot | Number of Days
• Disk Space | Reclaimable Space | Snapshot Space | Waste (%) - for Virtual Machines

The thing is I now don't understand how or where to set the x number of days? And then how I can apply this to a view?

Thanks very much for your help

[mark_j · Accepted solution]

Set the # days waste for snapshots here:

[itajuve84]

Awesome thanks very much for your help.

I managed to get that setup, I am just wondering when creating the view, do I create a filter on Disk Space Reclaimable | Snapshot Space | Reclaimable Capacity (GB) greater than 0GB?

Thanks very much

[JimKnopf99]

Hi,

i did the same report as you did. But the funny thing is, that the report show me snapshots on machines that did not have snaps.

What about you? Is the report working?

Thanks

Frank

[OsburnM]

Here's what I did & it seems to work.

In Policy, Set Virtual Machine > Reclaimable = Snapshots Older than 7 Days

Create View

Name: Snapshots Older Than 7 Days

Presentation: List

Subjects: Virtual Machine

Data: Disk Space Reclaimable|Snapshot Space|Reclaimable Capacity

Data > Metric Label: Diskspace Reclaimable from Snapshots Older than 7 Days

Filter: Metric > Disk Space Reclaimable|Snapshot Space|Reclaimable Capacity > 'is greater than' > 0GB

Further Analysis:  Compliance & Reclaimable Capacity

[itajuve84]

Hi Frank and OsburnM,

I did some testing and it seems to be working. My snapshot report is anything over 10 days, at for today it seems to be accurate.

I have changed the policy now to be 8 days, just to see if its working, but I don't seem to be seeing any additional VMs - even though there should be about 5 in the list according to my calculations.

Not sure if maybe it takes a while to apply the policy, so I might leave it over the weekend and see the results on Monday.

Will let you know.

Thanks to everyone for their responses and help!

[mark_j]

The waste calculations aren't every 5-min, you'll have to wait for the next calculation cycle, which usually happen 1,2,3 times a day (and no, they can't be scheduled or manually initiated). I usually give it a day for waste calc's to change.

[itajuve84]

Thanks Mark, that is what I thought.

I will let you know on Monday how it goes...

[itajuve84]

Hi All,

Just letting you know that I have done some testing today and everything is working!

So the details are above are correct for creating a view that contains virtual machines with snapshots older than x days.

Thanks to everyone for your help

[Mike_in_Irving]

I followed the steps in this post and was able to create a view that shows snapshots older than 7 days. Thank you all for this!

I have an additional requirement though that has me stumped. I want to add columns to my view that show the snapshot date and the snapshot name or description. I've been playing with it for 2 days and can't figure it out. Any ideas?

Mike