VMware Cloud Community
msmeltzer
Contributor
Contributor

Snapshot question

When a snapsnot is taken before the machine gets the updates, and if the updates are successful and you would like to proced with the snapshot'd version, do you have to apply the snapshot or just let the machine run as per normal from the snapshot?

Thanks

Matt

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32 Replies
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

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demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
0 Kudos
demz
Expert
Expert

Yes exactly.

Never let grow a snapshot if you can commit it !

You can have issue during its commit when it becomes too large...

Hope this helps,

Reply
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mikeddib
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

As mentioned previously, using the snapshot manager and removing a snapshot essentially is committing the snapshot.

As an added point, if you use the VMWare Update Manager with VirtualCenter it will manage that whole process. Taking or not taking a snapshot before the update is configurable and you can configure it to leave the snapshot until you decide or you can have it automatically removed/committed after a certain period of days. I can't agree more with everyone else that leaving running VMs with snapshots for extended periods of time is bad practice and letting Update Manager watch this for you will remove the possibility of forgetting to remove it when it's no longer needed.

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mike_laspina
Champion
Champion

Hi,

When a snapshot is invoked the system will begin to write all the VM's disk changes to a new vmdk file.

From this point forward the system will grow the snapshot vmdk file.

Your patch/software changes are in the new vmdk.

If your are happy with the changes then it would be prudent to commit the new vmdk file changes to the original vmdk file set.

This is actually done by removing the snapshots from the VM in the snapshot manager gui.

It is not good to leave a system running on one or more snapshots.

You could run out of space and the system will have more reservation conflicts which will degrade performance.

If you wish to keep the machine the way it was before as a backup for a longer duration then hot clone it to a new VM for safe keeping or move it off to a backup media.

http://blog.laspina.ca/ vExpert 2009
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demz
Expert
Expert

Dammit !

So sorry about that post flood due to the forum downtime yesterday (repost my answer, thought it wasn't posted but.... it was.)

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