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| Note |
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According VSS best practices (based on VMware best practices), the maximum life for a VM snapshot should be 72 hours. |
Snapshots are
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NOT backups
A virtual machine snapshot is not a copy so it cannot be treated as a direct backup. A snapshot file is only simply a change log of changes to the original virtual disk. Therefore, do not rely on it as a direct backup process. The virtual machine is running on the most current snapshot, not the original vmdk disk files.
Snapshots To reiterate: snapshots are not complete copies of the VM's original vmdk disk files. Taking a snapshot does not create a complete copy of the original vmdk disk file, rather it only copies the delta disks.
Side
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effects for VMs running with snapshots
- An excessive number of delta files in a chain (caused by an excessive number of snapshots) or large delta files may cause decreased virtual machine and host performance.
- Not able to increase size of Virtual Disk.
- Delta files can grow to the same size as the original base disk file, which is why the provisioned storage size of a virtual machine increases by an amount up to the original size of the virtual machine multiplied by the number of snapshots on the virtual machine.
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- Understanding virtual machine snapshots in VMware ESXi and ESX (VMware KB Article 1015180)
- Best practices for virtual machine snapshots in the VMware environment (VMware KB Article 1025279)
Requesting a Snapshot
You can To request a snapshot for your VM by, please use one of the following methods:
- Filling fill out the following Snapshot Request form.
- Via use the EIS Virtual Cloud RESTful API - How to schedule a VM snapshot
Reverting to a Snapshot
To revert to Virtual Machine snapshot could be done by:
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a VM to (or from) a specific snapshot, please use one of the following options:
- send an email to vss(at)eis.utoronto.ca.
- Via use the EIS Virtual Cloud RESTful API