Snapshot question

[BobKing]

I'm starting to learn this product - and am reading the documentation. In  the Operating Guide (Release 5.2 page 71) there is a discussion of "Enabling Snapshot Manager" - from the content I gather that what we are setting is first who can create snapshots (using vCenter) against the VM, how many snapshot will be allowed, and "WHEN A SNAPSHOT BECOMES TOO OLD TO APPLY."

This last prompts my question - if I set an obsolete date, and a snapshot crosses that threshold, will the system automatically consolidate that snapshot into the VM? If not, then I could end up with situations where I had snapshot files that I could not fully manage ... if, for instance, I had a series of snapshots and the oldest became obsolete, then I could never commit my newer snapshots into my original VM ...

Just curious,

Bob

[a_p_]

There's no option to set an obsolete date for a snapshot. Snapshots in VMware products work as a chain, where each chain link is in use and none of them can become obsolete. This would render all child snapshots obsolete too and would result in data loss. For details about how snapshots work, please see VMware KB: Understanding virtual machine snapshots in VMware ESXi and ESX .

André

[ShibbyB]

Bob,

  I was curious as to the behavior of Snapshot Manager in vCAC, so I deployed a machine with a 1 day snap age limit. When I logged in with an end user account, the only option was to delete the snapshot:

The admin interface provided information that it was too old to apply:

I could of course go into vCenter and roll-back to that snapshot, but not within vCAC. I think if you deploy with snapshot manager enabled at a customer site, probably need to put in a manual or preferably automated process to deal with these expired snaps that still remain.