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sapperdaddy
Contributor
Contributor

Sharing VM Snapshots

So I help run a lab, which has multiple pods for studying IP telephony (of the cisco variety). All of the pods run virtualized instances of call manager, etc...and what we typically do is build out a pod (including all VMs), and then clone those VM's to the other pods.  Then we create snapshots (starting points), for different labs (with some labs having quite a bit of pre-confguration done already). This is starting to eat up a tremendous amount of storage on our end, as we have say 12 pods, all running the same VMs, with the same exact snapshots. Now I know how snapshots traditionally work, and what their purpose is.  My question is, from a 'lets get creative perspective,' is it possible:

  1. If all the vm's start from a copy of the exact same disk, is it not possible to share snapshots someway? Even if its unsupported?

Any ideas?

-J

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sapperdaddy
Contributor
Contributor

I should also add. If you guys know of a better technology/way to reduce the storage overhead I would be open to hearing about that as well!

Thanks!

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AdilArif
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

HI,

Have you considered giving linked clones a try? They help reduce a lot of storage.

Cheers,

Adil Arif

Cheers, Adil Arif https://in.linkedin.com/pub/adil-arif/5b/a22/30 Blog: http://enterprisedaddy.com
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