Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

[VCPGuru]

I am cloning VMs with VMware.

Some VMs have sometimes after the clone process a snapshot "clone-snapshot-[date]" and the note is:

This temporary snapshot is taken as part of the clone operation. The temporary snapshot will be deleted once the clone operation is complete.

Any ideas why this snapshot wasnt deleted from the cloning process?

Greetings Simon

[AntonVZhbankov]

>Any ideas why this snapshot wasnt deleted from the cloning process?

How cloning works:

1) VM takes a snapshot - so VM disk state is freezed at particular moment and the changes are written to delta files.

2) Cloning is just a copying VM config file and frozen disks - so snapshot exists at this time

3) After cloning is complete snapshot is deleted (changes from delta files are commited and witten to base disks)

---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[VCPGuru]

Dear

Sorry, my question wasnt really clear:

Any ideas why this snapshot wasnt deleted AFTER (I looked at the VM 1 day after she was cloned) the cloning process?

[geddam]

Thats true!

These are generally treated as timedout snapshots, which means even though a proposed operation like clone/backup should commit the snapshots after quescing is completed, they will not able able to commit sometimes due to latency.

For addressing these kind of issues, we generally use scripts to monitor snapshots using windows task scheduler.

Also look for various snapshot scenarios in KB: 900

Hope I answered your question.

Thanks,,

Ramesh. Geddam,

VCP 3&4, MCTS(Hyper-V), SNIA SCP.

Please award points, if helpful

[AntonVZhbankov]

That's pretty simple. Snapshot deletion can fail or even it can happen that it won't start.

VM is not affected, services are not affected - so just delete snapshot manually.

---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[VCPGuru]

Dear

"For addressing these kind of issues, we generally use scripts to monitor snapshots using windows task scheduler."

Could you please provide your scripts?

Thank you in advance

[geddam · Accepted solution]

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-6980

This is the script I am using...

Thanks,,

Ramesh. Geddam,

VCP 3&4, MCTS(Hyper-V), SNIA SCP.

Please award points, if helpful