Hi
when you consolidate your VMs, they won't be powered down. After consolidation, it will also consume less space.
Virtual disk consolidation is the process of merging virtual disk files created after taking snapshots. You can initiate disk consolidation on demand to avoid performance degradation and other issues. When you take a snapshot, delta disks are created and changes are written to the appropriate delta disk (the latest delta disk by default, until one of the previous snapshots is selected to restore the virtual machine). As a result, redundant data is present in the virtual machine storage because each delta disk contains all changes made as compared to the previous delta disk state, and the parent disk remains unchanged.
When the chain of snapshots and related virtual disk files becomes large, performance degrades. When you perform VMware disk consolidation, data from delta disks is merged to a single disk, and no redundant data is left on the datastore where this VM’s files are located. Storage space is cleaned after you consolidate virtual machine disk files. Remember that VMware recommends using no more than 32 snapshots per VM.
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