Snaphots - Space to leave spare and viewing snapshot usage

[atbnet]

I just came up against a VMFS volume that ran out of space due to a VM snaphot consuming the remaining space. I have now resolved this by making a new LUN and VMFS volume and moving it to that.

However this has lead me to think about a few things:

1. What space does everyone leave on each VMFS voume for snaphots, logs etc?

2. How does everyone view their snapshot usage for each VM? Using tools, VC DB queries etc?

Thanks,

Andy, VMware Certified Professional (VCP),

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[weinstein5]

One thing to keep in mind it is not best practice to run production VMs with Snapshots for this very reason - they should be in use for short periods of time and probably not get larger than 50-100 MB before being committed -

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[chrisAMS]

I always let twice the free space that i need as snapshot problem can become a nightmare specially when you cant add another LUN.

I assume that snapshot take max 10% of the space so i let 20% free and more if i can.

In fact i use snapshot for replication purpose or test, so i really follow up this daily and delete as soon as i do not need

But to be honnest it is because i got huge problems with disk space in the past so i odnt take risk anymore

[atbnet]

Sure, I know snapshots are there only for temporary testing and helping vcb take place. Just want to know the best practices for VMFS and snapshots such as space to leave. 10-25% seems to be average, though 25% is a bit high, cant see most people wasting 25% of precious SAN space by default.

Is there any decent tools you guys use to see what snaphots you have? If you have hundreds of VMs manually checking can be a very tedious task. I noticed you can look in the VC DB at the snapshots table but it does not show much details like size etc just the description and config file of the VM.

Andy, VMware Certified Professional (VCP),

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[petedr]

We recommend 10% free space on the vmfs at a minimum if not a little higher .

For reporting snapshot information xtravirt has a free tool ( snaphunter ) which will report on snapshot statuses of VMs.

http://engineering.xtravirt.com/products/phd-technologies/snaphunter.html

[mcowger]

We keep 8%, but also forbid the use of snapshots. If we allowed snapshots, we'd keep it probbly in the 12% range.

--Matt