Migration between isolated ESXi/vCenter environments (active snapshots)

[PatrickFrith]

We are migrating an active isolated sandbox environment (AD authentication, internal DNS, Exchange, Solarwinds, SQL, as well as some RH Linux 6.4 servers) from one ESXi/vCenter environment to another. This migration will all be offline as both environments are isolated. We have read and reviewed the documentation related to this process, but there is one item which cannot find any direct information on.

Prior to any major changes (including patch updates) we make snapshots of the virtual servers. For folks that have done offline migrations such as this, does it help to remove the snapshots before making the OVF?  We have a back and forth between some of the team about whether or not the presence may cause an issue at the migration end site. 

All hosts within the source and target environments are running the same version/build of ESXi 6.5, and all of the servers in both locations are the same Compatibility - ESXi 6.5 (VM Version 13)

Thanks for the assist!

Patrick

[nachogonzalez]

Hey hope you are doing fine:

Having snapshots older than 14 days can cause consistency and performance issues to your VMs.
Having a big snapshot chain on a VM can cause performance degradation and consistency issues
The proper usage of a Snapshot should be:

1. Take it before any change
2. Change goes by
3. After 48/72 hs without an issue snapshot is deleted.

since you will be exporting and OVF the snapshots will be added into the OVF and will make the OVF chain bigger with no actual usage.

TL;DR: yes, delete the snapshots before exporting.