In contrast, backups are independent mechanisms that allow virtual machine files, disks, and entire virtual machine registrations to be recreated with no dependency on the production data or virtual disks contained in the virtual machine. If the base disks on which the snapshots depend are deleted, the snapshots do not contain the data needed to recreate the missing data. They are sometimes referred to as snapshot “chains” due to this interrelationship between the child/delta disk and the base disks they depend on. Snapshots can be known as differencing disks as they really are a set of delta information in relation to the “base” disk. In fact, they rely on the very virtual machine files that they may differ from. Snapshots are not backups as they are not independent of the virtual machine files themselves. Many have mistakenly viewed them as such and were left in the lurch because of this mistaken use case. VMware snapshots are NOT backups of virtual machines.
Since a snapshot is a point in time version of a particular virtual machine including files, state, and configuration elements, wouldn’t this suffice to say that we have a vSphere backup of a virtual machine if it contains a snapshot? No. Then if you add a secondary NIC and then roll back to the snapshot, the NIC will be gone as it is very much a configuration snapshot as well as data and state. For instance, you could take a snapshot of a virtual machine without a secondary virtual NIC. Aside from the disk and memory contents included in a snapshot, the VMware snapshot also includes the configuration of the virtual machine itself including devices, virtual network cards, etc. When we think about the state of a virtual machine, this includes not simply the data as mentioned but the memory footprint at the time of the snapshot which allows the capturing of the power state of the virtual machine. VMware snapshots are more than that, however, as they have the mechanism built in to preserve not only the data of a virtual machine but also the state of that virtual machine. However, images in the legacy use of the term are simply representations of the files that reside on a disk. Many might think of a VMware snapshot as an image and we may have heard them called that. What Are VMware Snapshots?Ī VMware snapshot is a point in time version of a particular virtual machine.
Clone vms in vsphere client 6.5 trial#
Start the free trial of NAKIVO Backup & Replication today and get the first-hand experience of our product's capabilities. NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a comprehensive solution which offers robust protection of your virtual, physical, and cloud environments. What are VMware snapshots? What are acceptable use cases for snapshots? How do we go about creating snapshots both in vSphere web client as well as via PowerCLI?
Let’s take a deeper look into the anatomy of VMware snapshots. Snapshots provide very specific use cases that can be leveraged in certain situations. One of the tantalizingly cool features of VMware virtual machines since they came on the scene has been the ability to take snapshots and revert back to those snapshots if need be. VMware vSphere virtual machines provide powerful capabilities that allow today’s workloads to have a very agile, versatile, and efficient environment for software.
Clone vms in vsphere client 6.5 how to#
By Brandon Lee VMware Snapshots in vSphere How To