Consolidate Snapshot option!

[lvaibhavt]

Hi all,

I am learning ESXi 5 and I a saw an option for consolidate snapshot.

I a test xp machine and it has three snapshots.

I googled consolidate snapshot feature and came to know if there are snapshots in a VM and they are not seen by the snapshot manager then we should run the consolidate option --- is this right ?

what will happen after I run the consolidate option ? Will the snapshots come up again in the snapahot manager ? How does this work in the background

Thanks

[aravinds3107]

Normally when a snapshot are deleted the snapshot disks are merged and consolidated to the base disk, In case of the consolidation fails then there wont be any snapshot shown in the snapshot manager.

In vSphere 5.x a new feature has been introduced in the vSphere Client so that Admins can able to check the VM is there is consolidate required without check the VM folders for the delta files

what will happen after I run the consolidate option ? How does this work in the  background

Snapshot disk will be merged to the base disk and it work in the same process deleting snapshot from snapshot manager

Will the snapshots come up again in the snapahot manager ?

No Snapshot will not be seen in snapshot manager

Check the below two articles to know more on this

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2011/08/consolidate-snapshots.html

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200363...

[lvaibhavt]

Thank you for the reply,

I have couple of questions that I need to ask

First >> If for any VM I do not see snapshots and the consolidate options comes up as YES. Then in this case I need to click on consolidate snapshots. In the background it will delete the snapshots and merge them to the parent disk.

So after some time the delta files should not be visible from command console --- is this right ?

Second >> If I see the snapshots in the snapshot manager and the option for the Consolidate is NO. Then if I hit consolidate manager then what will happen

Thanks

[aravinds3107]

1) Yes that's right, snapshot disk will merge to base disk and delta files will not longer be present in the VM folder.

2) I think when you hit consolidte option when it show NO it does the same steps by merging the disk to base disk