VMWare 4/Netapp: When you delete a VM snapshot..
When you delete a VM snapshot (we are on VMWare 4 and have Netapp iscsi storage) - is that a write intensive operation? Or is it just a matter of removing a pointer?
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Depending upon the size of the snapshot, how many snapshots, how long VM has been running on a delta (snapshot) disk, how fast the datastore, SATA or SAS disks, RAID type, it could take many hours, to the longest I've seen 4 days to merge the disks.
I concur with @hanccocka, don't get your vmware and Netapp snapshots confused.
SMVI can do both (while making a backup so it can quiesce the VM using vmware snapshots prior to taking Netapp snapshots) The load and read/write is minimal since it's only for a short period of time.
SMVI can do both (while making a backup so it can quiesce the VM using vmware snapshots prior to taking Netapp snapshots) The load and read/write is minimal since it's only for a short period of time.
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This answer is so awesome I wish I could give more points! Thank you.
Typically when you take a snaphot, the original vmdk is frozen and all changes are written to a newly created snapshot file.
When you come to delete it, typically you want to commit the changes (made since the snapshot was taken) back into the vmdk. Therefore this is write intensive.
If on the other hand you want to roll back to the snapshot and then delete the "forward" changes, it will be less write intensive.