Can I snapshot a VM then move the disk to a new VM?

[DanRIA]

I have a VM appliance running on VMware 5.5, which consists of two disks; a SLES Linux OS disk and a data disk.  The vendor has sent out an upgrade to the appliance which they want installed from an OVA.  Then the old appliance is shut down, a snapshot taken of it, then the data disk is disassociated from the old appliance and associated to the new one.  Then the new appliance is brought up and configured.  So at this point I would have a new appliance with an OS disk with no snapshot and a data disk with a snapshot. 

Will this work?

Assuming everything is successful, then how do I release the snapshot of the data disk on the new appliance?

Thanks,

Dan

[rcporto]

I believe that a better and safe approach is to clone the old appliance, and then use the cloned data disk to attach to your new appliance.

[DanRIA]

The problem is the time it takes to clone the appliance and data disk.  I was hoping to use snapshot technology for disaster recovery.  I do have nightly backups of the VM that 'should' be good.

Dan

[MDNaseer]

Snapshot is not recommended,

Better go with clonning