snapshot management

[rhltechie27]

I have learned the hard way recently that snapshots continue to grow....and grow. I have been doing some research and understand that keeping a snapshot around for a long time is not a good idea. My question is, is there any way to save the snapshot somewhere else in the event you do wish to revert to it?

[RParker]

Yeah, it's called "backup"

[rhltechie27]

thanks for your flame...geez. i understand that backups are important and i do them, but reverting to a snapshot is a lot easier than restoring a backup...in my current environment.

[ewannema]

An image backup with VCB will definitely do the trick. You could also shut off the VM and make a copy of the VMDKs. This does essentially the same thing, but shutting down and renaming the copied files for a recovery might be easier for you.

If you copy the files to another machine beware of ASCII ftp tranfer modes. I would recommend doing a MD5 hash of the source and verifying that it copied correctly by doing another MD5 hash on the copied file. VMware has recommended converting monolithic files into 2gsparse if you plan on copying off of the host.