VM Snapshot and Current State

[Baeta]

Hello all,

Is there a way to delete all the snapshots from a VM and maintain only the current state? I mean, how can I delete all past snapshots without lost the current state? Is it possible or I have to maintain at least one snapshot?

I am talking about snapshot manager on VI3.

tks

[admin · Accepted solution]

The 'delete' button consolodates the snapshots into the base VMDK, it's just confusingly labelled. You can either click a snap and then click delete to commit it, or click the 'celete all' button to commit all snapshots. 'delete'ing snaps will not discard any data.

[Baeta]

What you are saying is that I can delete all snapshots and my current state will not be lost?

I mean, I can delete all parents and childs snapshots and the current state will be maintained? No risks?

It makes sense because I can do that with the VM running, which means that if for any reason this action deleted my current state my VM would be forced to stop, right?

[Rynardts]

Im the Manage Snapshot dialog, the "you are here" sign is usually displayed below the snapshot, and therefore looks like a "child" of the snapshot. When you delete a snapshot before or directly above the "you are here" line, the changes in the "redo" file for the snapshot being deleted, gets merged with the VMDK of the virtual machine, so you end up with the current state, but will not be able to go back to the snapshot's state. If that makes sense

Deleting a snapshot will not cause the loss of the current state. Reverting to a previous snapshot will cause a loss of the current state and point it back to the snapshot's state.

Message was edited by: Rynardts

Changed all the Template words to what it should have been.... SNAPSHOT

[Radler]

Hello,

I thought all the mysteries about the VM-snapshots are gone... at least for me

But now I noticed different states of the snapshots in the VC snapshot manager. Some of them are "active?" means green although no one did make a "goto" or "revert to".

What does this mean that on one VM all of the snapshots are marked green, on another VM none of them? I didn't found the answer in the manuals. Please take a look at the attachements. Can someone explain that?

... and yes, I know that we shouldn't keep the snaps for so long.

Thanks and regards

Martin

[Radler]

It's so easy....

Answer from the VMware Support:

-

---

The green icon mean that the snapshot was taken when the machine was powered on. You can revert the VM to a running state by reverting to a snapshot that

was taken in a running state. If you revert a VM that is not green the VM will be powered off and will need to be booted again.

Snapshots are normally taken of disks but the running snapshots also have a snapshot of the RAM of a VM so you can go back to that very running state the

machine was at when the snapshot was taken.

You won't have the green symbol even if you take a snapshot of a running VM if you select not to take a snapshot of RAM.

-

---

perhaps this answers also the question of others

Martin

[maxi-m]

I realize that this is an older thread and will create a link to it - but just in case anyone follows up on it.

After having issues with "stale" snapshots in the past I stopped using them but for a current project and some encouragement from another group I started using them again.

This thread was very helpful in diagnosing the issue we were having - I used "Delete" trying to revert to the original image and our developer kept saying that there were files from earlier in the day and the event log had entries previous to the current install process.

If this post is correct then "Delete" merges all data into the previous snapshot or V-disk - would appreciate a clear explanation on how it works and what is required to remove all snapshots leaving the base VM in it's origianl state.

Thanks in advance, I'm going to create a new thread linked to this one.