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  • 1.  Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 07:34 AM

    I am cloning VMs with VMware.

    Some VMs have sometimes after the clone process a snapshot "clone-snapshot-[date]" and the note is:

    This temporary snapshot is taken as part of the clone operation. The temporary snapshot will be deleted once the clone operation is complete.

    Any ideas why this snapshot wasnt deleted from the cloning process?

    Greetings Simon



  • 2.  RE: Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 08:27 AM

    >Any ideas why this snapshot wasnt deleted from the cloning process?

    How cloning works:

    1) VM takes a snapshot - so VM disk state is freezed at particular moment and the changes are written to delta files.

    2) Cloning is just a copying VM config file and frozen disks - so snapshot exists at this time

    3) After cloning is complete snapshot is deleted (changes from delta files are commited and witten to base disks)


    ---

    MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

    http://blog.vadmin.ru



  • 3.  RE: Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 08:30 AM

    Dear

    Sorry, my question wasnt really clear:

    Any ideas why this snapshot wasnt deleted AFTER (I looked at the VM 1 day after she was cloned) the cloning process?



  • 4.  RE: Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 09:32 AM

    Thats true!

    These are generally treated as timedout snapshots, which means even though a proposed operation like clone/backup should commit the snapshots after quescing is completed, they will not able able to commit sometimes due to latency.

    For addressing these kind of issues, we generally use scripts to monitor snapshots using windows task scheduler.

    Also look for various snapshot scenarios in KB: 900

    Hope I answered your question.

    Thanks,,

    Ramesh. Geddam,

    VCP 3&4, MCTS(Hyper-V), SNIA SCP.

    Please award points, if helpful



  • 5.  RE: Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 10:36 AM

    Dear

    "For addressing these kind of issues, we generally use scripts to monitor snapshots using windows task scheduler."

    Could you please provide your scripts?

    Thank you in advance



  • 6.  RE: Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?
    Best Answer

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 12:23 PM

    http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-6980

    This is the script I am using...

    Thanks,,

    Ramesh. Geddam,

    VCP 3&4, MCTS(Hyper-V), SNIA SCP.

    Please award points, if helpful



  • 7.  RE: Clone VM, temporary snapshot still there!?

    Posted Mar 15, 2010 10:13 AM

    That's pretty simple. Snapshot deletion can fail or even it can happen that it won't start.

    VM is not affected, services are not affected - so just delete snapshot manually.


    ---

    MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

    http://blog.vadmin.ru