Virtual Machine has more then 3 Snapshots - Veeam Replica

[MattHumphreys]

We run veeam to replicate virtual machines from one location to another, they have many snapshots attached as per the replication and retention settings and we now get this critical warning, not sure how applicable this is because all the VM's that its alerting for are powered off and are replica's.

Your article suggests that 32 snapshots are supported but for optimal performance 2-3 is recommended

How does that qualify as a "Critical" finding if its just a recommendation

Secondly in terms of performance should there not be some sort of logic check to see if the VM is actually powered on.

Thirdly all the snapshots are created automatically by Veeam and they have a particular format "Restore Point dd-mm-yyyy HH:MM:SS" as the name and there is a description which contains data that veeam uses, is it possible to setup some logic to exclude these type of snapshots from the logic?

[scott28tt]

See this comment: Re: Finding ID vSphere-VMmorethan3snapshots-KB#1025279 and vVols

[MattHumphreys]

Again I am not running virtual machines, these are powered off replica's of original VM's, the original VM's have no snapshots, only the replica VM's created by veeam have the snapshots and they are all powered off hence my question about a state check before raising the finding.

If the VM is powered down but with snapshots that is not relevant as it is not "running"

[scott28tt]

You'll have to wait for someone from the Skyline team to see this thread, or I can move it to that forum area (as a moderator)

[MattHumphreys]

Hi Scott,

Sorry for that I thought I had posted it in skyline section, if you could relocate it that would be great.

Regards

Matt

[scott28tt]

Moderator: Thread moved to the Skyline area.

[Aditya2018]

Hello MattHumphreys​

The recommendations are generated for the disk chain of the VMDK, hence the power state of the VM does not have any effect.  Irrespective of the solution that created the snapshot, it would still be considered a snapshot chain on VMDK.

You can mute the findings if it is not relevant to your environment, but the rule is put in place as VMware recommends snapshot as a temporary state only.

[MattHumphreys]

I appreciate that I can mute it but that doesnt solve the underlying issue

Veeam uses this method for its replicas, which as I understand it is a vmware supported/verified product

If we mute the finding it will not notify us for all VM's when I only want to exclude a subset of VM's created by veeam, I want to know if this is the case for any standard virtual machine not for the the DR replica's.

[Aditya2018]

Hello MattHumphreys​

The Skyline analysis for snapshot considers all Delta disks(snapshot disks) in the environment irrespective of the source of creation, the only consideration it has is the age of the Delta disk. Hence, it is not possible to hide/remove the VMs from the list in the case of replica VMs.

[jbgorrie]

I realize that snapshots are not ideal, but in vSphere7 the content library uses snapshots as checkin/out points for templates within the library.

So how do we reconcile that part as well?

(example below of a VM in the content library with three versions of the VM)

Name Date State Quiesced Description

jbg1-test (2)

  vm-template-snapshot 2020-05-15T19:43 poweredOff N Snapshot used by Content Library to che

jbg1-test (3)

  vm-template-snapshot 2020-05-15T19:47 poweredOff N Snapshot used by Content Library to che

[Aditya2018]

Hello jbgorrie 

The logic for recommendation is the age of the snapshot file.

Snapshots are used in other operations within the VMware software stack, like Horizon View, vSphere Replication, etc. Those snapshots are omitted from recommendations as they are kept for a short time. Snapshots in the Content library are expected to be kept for a long duration. The Datastore of the Content library is labeled, we can raise a feature request to skip the datastore.

I would recommend using the 'Hide recommendation' option, so you do not miss any recommendations for the datastore.