Clone VM with all snapshots
I want to commit these snapshots to the VM and regain valuable disk space.
The problem is because these machines are very critical and MUST remain online, I can't just down the VM and then copy the files somewhere else in case of problems.
I want to know if there is a way to backup or clone a VM with ALL associated snapshots in the event of a problem after commiting the out of date snapshots (some are 2 years old)
I am using ESX 3.5 and Vcenter 2.5.
I am not adverse to updating if there is a way to do it without downtime.
Thanks in advance
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vcenter_converter_standalone/4_0
For the conversion steps, read this article by Bestway
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/VMWare/A_3639-VMware-vConverter-P2V-for-Windows-Servers.html
In my opinion, snapshots act as a boon / bane depending on circumstances.
The time taken to restore a VM with snapshots also increases considerably depending on how the snapshots are nested.
ICT Senior Infraestructure Engineer
That is the problem of many costumers, they use snapshots as the Backup process.
Snapshots are a temporarily backup of the state VM, nothing more.
Clone, convert any of this VMs will never copy the snapshots.
Even use the Veeam FastFCP you will not by able to copy this VMs online. They need to power off to copy.
You can use the Veeam Backup & Replication(you 30 days trial with full features). This can make an image backup or just a copy(depending of the option) of each VM online. But again, this only will backup/copy the VM, not the snapshots.
Never tested this, but try to create a copy(with Veeam Backup) then manually use the Veeam FastFCP to copy the snapshots. I never tested this, so I do not know if this can work and use after the snapshots on that copy.
Jail
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