Snapshots - committing.

[seanhaynes]

Morning all - actually not so much a question as just checking I've got my understanding of the snapshot technology correct.

I've just upgraded vCenter rom v5 to v5.1x - before starting the process I took a snapshot. the upgrade went fine so now I want to commit / merge the snapshot into the parent image. So for this VM I have the parent image and a single child snapshot.

If in the vSphere client GUI I go to the snapshot manager on the vCenter VM it shows the parent and child image - if I select 'DELETE' or DELETE ALL', correct me if I'm wrong, but this will delete the child snapshot and merge all the changes I've made ( ie the vCenter upgrades ) into the parent image?

If I select 'REVERT TO CURRENT SNAPSHOT' in the properties menu of the vCenter VM, this will delete all the changes I've made and in this case revert back to the pre-upgrade parent image?

In snapshot manager there is a 'GO TO' option - I'm thinking this is the same as 'REVERT TO CURRENT SNAPSHOT' in so far as with multiple snapshots this gives you the option to pick the snapshot you want to revert back to dumping any later created snapshots?

Lastly what does the 'CONSOLIDATE' option do?

cheers

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

You are correct, "Delete" and "Delete All" will commit changes to the parent/base disk, whereas "Revert" and "Go To" are used to return to a previous state. "Delete All" will commit all snapshots in the chain, independent on whether they show up in the Snapshot Manager or not. "Consolidate" was introduced with ESXi 5 and basically does the same thing as "Delete All", except that you don't need to take an additional snapshot in case no snapshot shows up in the Snapshot Manager (for more details see http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2011/08/consolidate-snapshots.html).

André

[seanhaynes]

Thanks for that - merged using the 'DELETE' option in Snapshot manager - all good.