What happens to children when deleting a snapshot in vmware?

by

You need to rewrite that snapshot tree. The actual tree looks like this:

  • SnapshotA
    • SnapshotB
      • SnapshotC
        • Current

When you took SnapshotA, the main vmdk file was frozen and a new delta file was created. All changes were written to the delta file from that point onwards.

When you took SnapshotB, the first delta file was frozen and another delta file was created.
All changes were written to this new delta file from that point onwards.

And when you took SnapshotC, the second delta file was frozen and yet another delta file was created, representing the “current” state. All changes are written to this file.

  1. If you delete SnapshotB, the first delta file will be merged with the the second delta file which represents SnapshotC. So the file backing SnapshotC will change but the actual state of SnapshotC won’t change.

  2. No, a Snapshot is not modified that way. Deleting SnapshotB pushes those changes to the next file down in the tree which depends on those changes. Applying them to SnapshotA (the base vmdk) would in essence turn SnapshotA into SnapshotB, which would make snapshots unusable. 🙂

Leave a Comment