VMware Cloud Community
Juan_Carnage_II
Contributor
Contributor

Migrating, what do I need to know about my existing Snapshots?

I have 1 Virtual machine (Server 2008 Standard) with 4 snapshots I took as I added roles and functions in case I made a mistake.  Everything is up and running with out issue, but I wasnt sure what to do with my 4 snapshots.  When I bring up the snapshot menu I see "You are here" listed at the bottom and I'm concerned about the ramifications of moving my VM to an external datastore (NFS) from the present datastore (Local RAID array) will I need to move my snapshot files too?  Is there a way to consolidate the snapshots so that I'm moving a single VM disk etc?

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

Use Snapshot manager and "Delete All". That will consolidate the snapshots.

Understanding Snapshots

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
GaneshNetworks

You cannot do live migration when the VM contains even a single snapshot.

If you are sure that you don't want the snapshots, just delete it and live migrate it. It requres few clicks, thats it. Otherwise if you are consider the existing snapshot will help you in future, Shutdown the VM and migrate (Cold) it.

Happy Migrating!!!

Thanks,

Ganesh

~GaneshNetworks™~ If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".
Juan_Carnage_II
Contributor
Contributor

So I don't have to worry about damaging my VM when deleting the snapshots?  The thing that threw me was "You are here" and if I delete the snapshots it appears to me that I'd be rolling back to the very begining stages of my VM installation.

I think it works more like snapshots are independant of the VM state and only apply or are valid if I need to go back in time.  Without snapshots my server should continue to function, it's just I can't go back in time, since again the snapshots have been deleted.

Is this about right?

Reply
0 Kudos
legal1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

DSTAVERT has the right answer to consolidate your snapshots.  I just wanted to add the comment that creating snapshots during an install process is a good thing, but you should delete them (consolidate) once you know things are working correctly.

Personally I had a SQL server get hosed when I did a host & storage vMotion and had several snapshots and it the corruption had something to do with one of the snapshot disks.  I had also been taking snaps as I built the server although I didn't think about them before migrating the server. It's good that you noticed and thought to ask about it.

Another reason to not keep these around is that it takes much longer to consolidate the snapshots if you wait.  The snapshot is what new data is added to and those files keep growing. If something comes up that you need to move the server disk files to new storage quickly, you're out of luck.

You don't mention what version of VMware you're on so if you are on vSphere 4.x, you can potentially move the drives using storage vmotion. Don't use a  copy utility from the storage side because it won't update the VM files to point to the new storage location. You may need to (or prefer to) do a cold migration of the server (shut it down, then use the migrate option). This can save some time at the very least.

If you haven't done so already, you may want to create a test machine to migrate back & forth to your new storage.  Better a sacrificial PC than a production server if something isn't going to work.

Reply
0 Kudos
DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

Is this about right?

I re read your post and you aren't understanding. I would read the link to understanding snapshots. It is very important to have a good idea what they are and how they function.

When you take a snapshot all writes to the disk vmdk are frozen. A new vmdk file is created and all new writes go to the new vmdk file. When you consolidate the files are merged.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
Reply
0 Kudos