Parent and children snapshots.

[GatorSix]

Hello everyone,

How are children snapshots effected when changes are made to the parent?

Original disk

     |-> Snapshot 1

          |-> Snapshot 2

What happens to Snapshot 2 after using "Go to" / "Revert to" function and going back to Snapshot 1 and making changes to it?

Do these changes propagate to children?

Thank you.

[a_p_]

Snapshots only contain changed data blocks, and modifying a .vmdk file which is not the latest in the chain will more or less corrupt all of its children.

Using the Snapshot Manager with the "Go to" function works differently. Going back to the latest snasphot will discard the changes made since the creation of the snasphot. Going back to e.g. "Snasphot 1" however, will dircard any changes made after "Snaphsot 2" was created (i.e. all that's in "You are here"), and create a new snapshot with "Snapshot 1" as its parent, i.e. it will not make any changes in an existing snapshot chain.

Take a look at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180 to see how snasphots work in VMware products.

André

[GatorSix]

Thanks for the answer. Let me clarify what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm deploying Linked Clones VDI and this is what my chain looks like:

Parent VM vmdk (Windows 7 OS + Updates)

          |-> "Clean" (Snapshot of a clean installation above)

                    |-> "Common Software" (Installed common software like Office, Flash, PDF Reader, etc. and took this snapshot)

                              |-> "Group 1" (Installed additional software needed only by this group of desktops and took snapshot)

                              |-> "Group 2" (Reverted to "Common Software", installed software for group 2 and took this snapshot)

                              |-> "Group 3" (Same as above)

The question is:

When Time comes to install windows and software updates. Do I "Go to" Common software snapshot and install updates, and reconcile desktop pool, or I need to go to each individual one and install updates, retake snapshot and reconcile?

Is there a best practice document on handling linked clone updates and snapshots?

Thank you.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

I don't think there's a best practice for how to manage your golden images (snapshots) for the pools. It actually depends on whether patching all 3 groups is easier than reverting to "Common Software", patching this one and then recreating the 3 groups (i.e. reinstall the additional software).

André