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  • 1.  Snaphots - Consolidate or delete?

    Posted Jul 18, 2014 02:05 PM

    Prior to a SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 migration, I created a snapshot of my SBS 2003 VM, just incase I ran into problems, I could revert back to the snapshot. The migration was a success. Both servers are still up-and-running and communicating with another, however, I now wish to remove the snapshot of the SBS 2003 VM. Should I consolidate:

    or delete:

    What's the difference. Of course, the SBS 2003 needs to continue as usual without data loss.

    Many thanks for your feedback.

    Regards, Oliver



  • 2.  RE: Snaphots - Consolidate or delete?
    Best Answer

    Posted Jul 18, 2014 02:43 PM

    Probably you can use both, I prefer to use the "Remove"option from the snapshot menu to be sure the snapshot is removed.

    The consolidate option is also available in case there is no snapshot, but there are snapshot disks active.

    Sometimes a snapshot can be removed but in the background the disk consolidation failed. In that case there will not be an option to remove a snapshot, but the disks are still split on the datastore. Now you can use the consolidate option to merge those disks.

    See also:

    vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 9 - Snapshot Consolidate | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs



  • 3.  RE: Snaphots - Consolidate or delete?

    Posted Jul 18, 2014 02:49 PM

    hi

    i suggest to go with snapshot deletion instead consolidation because of below reason.

    Consolidating snapshots for a virtual machine

    Note: Before you proceed, ensure to consider these points related to snapshot consolidation:

    • The remove snapshot process can take a long time to complete if the snapshots are large. 
    • If the consolidation process is stopped before completing, it may result in data corruption. 
    • Virtual machine performance may be degraded during the snapshot consolidation process.


  • 4.  RE: Snaphots - Consolidate or delete?

    Posted Jul 18, 2014 08:39 PM

    As correctly mentioned by the two other posters you can safely use either option. I prefer "Alle Löschen" in such a case, because this will consolidate all existing snapshots (i.e. merge all changes into the base disk) no matter whether they show up in the snapshot manager or not. In my opinion "Alle Löschen" and "Löschen" was not the best decision for naming the buttons, Consolidate and Consolidate All would be better options.

    André



  • 5.  RE: Snaphots - Consolidate or delete?

    Posted Jul 18, 2014 10:25 PM

    hi

    why keep the sbs 2003 after migration?

    sbs2003 will shut down after few weeks

    i would delete the snapshot if the migration went well.

    and eventually delete the  vm migration.