Best practices for removing snapshots

[jackman]

I just destroyed a DC by removing snapshots, which I admit had been on ESX (3.0.2) for far too long. I'm rebuilding right now, but I'd like to know if there's a 'best way' to remove the snapshots to avoid this in the future. This time, I did it by the VC console with the VM running, and the console said it timed out even though I could see by SSH that it was still processing the command. Is it better to shutdown the VM and remove the snapshot by the CLI? Thanks!

[kharbin]

If you have a very large snapshot, it will not commit in the time period expected by the ESX host, so it assums the process failed, thus the timeout error. Problem is, for large snaps, often the process is still running (as you saw when you SSH'd in to the console). You have to just leave the VM be, and let the commit finish. I have seen VMs with 60GB of snaps take as long as 12 hours to commit, but it does eventually finish with no harm to the VM. You only harm the VM if you interrupt the snap commit process (sounds like you found that out also). If in this situation again, check the date/time stamp of the VMDK file for the VM. If the date/time stamp is being updating, then you know the snap is being committed, and just let the VM be until finished.

Also, if you had a fast, easy to use backup program (like esXpress), you would not have to rebuild the VM either.

2 cents worth

Ken Harbin

www.esXpress.com

[jackman]

Yeah, I knew enough not to touch the machine while the snapshot was being flattened, but still had disk corruption happen. I'm guessing that this may have been avoided if I'd shut off the machine before removing the snapshots. Does esXpress back up machines with snapshots?

[depping]

Databases and AD isn't fond of the Sync Driver which is part of the VMware tools. Do a search on it in this forum and you will find a bunch of topics.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

[tehremo]

We just had the same issue. When removing 5 snapshots one failed. We didn't touch it, and it eventually disappeared from the Recent Tasks list. I would also be interested in a Best Practices for removing and/or handling snapshots in general.

Thanks!

[Curdasss · Accepted solution]

My prefered method to remove a snapshot that has some how went undetected and is rather large, is to power the VM off and from the service console run "vmware-cmd /location/of/vmx/file removesnapshots". I've never had an issue with that method. In fact i run that command if it's a fairly new snap with the VM powered on. I just don't trust removing snaps though Virtual Center, to much of a chance to mess things up.

[jackman]

Excellent - that's been my experience too. I think I'll just use the CLI from here on in for this kind of thing, with the VM's powered off. Lesson learned - glad I didn't do the rest of the servers before seeing if this one completed successfully. Thanks for all your help.

[petedr]

Hey jackman,

I work for esXpress and yes our new 3.1 version of esXpress can backup virtual machines with existing snapshots.

Pete@esxpress