Manage VMware Snapshots: Delete or Edit or Revert a Snapshot

Here you will learn how to manage VMware Snapshots: Delete or Edit or Revert a Snapshot. VMware Snapshot is a valuable feature that allows you to take a snapshot of a virtual machine’s current state. This allows you to return to that state at any time. Here are some exciting articles: How To Deploy Azure VMware Solution Private Cloud, How to Create a Snapshot on vSphere Web Client, Create or delete snapshots on VMware Workstation, and How to upgrade VMware Tools in vSphere.

This can be useful when making changes to a virtual machine, as it provides a way to quickly roll back when needed.

Now that you have learned what a snapshot is all about. You would also want to know why you may want to edit a snapshot, revert and also delete a snapshot.

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Behavior on deletion

When a snapshot is created, the state of the virtual disk at that time is retained. While all writes to the VMDK file are stopped. To capture changes, the system creates an additional VMDK file (delta disk) for every VMDK disk contained in the data store and writes changes to that file.

If you take more than one snapshot, the system creates delta disks for each VMDK disk of every snapshot, representing differences between them. A large chain of snapshots and the corresponding delta disk files reduce VM storage performance. There, I will be showing you how to delete not needed snapshots in order to avoid performance degradation.

When a VM needs to read data, the parent virtual disk VMDK file and related delta VMDK files (VMware snapshot files) must be read together in sequential order. This is needed to rebuild the data change (virtual disk input) history recorded in snapshot files and output the requested data for a VM.

When you delete a snapshot, the system merges the changes between the snapshots and previous disk states. All the data from the delta disk, which includes information about the deleted snapshot, is written to the original VMDK disk.

Delete a Snapshot

The time needed for the deletion of a snapshot depends on the amount of data that has been written to the virtual disks since the last snapshot. To delete a VM, open the VMware vSphere web client and log in to your vSphere environment.

Locate the VM, Select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, host, or vApp etc. Select the virtual machine you want to delete the snapshot from.

Click on the “Delete” button as shown below.

Confirm the deletion

From the Recent Task window, you will see the status of the snapshot removal.

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Delete All Snapshot

In the “Delete Snapshot” dialog box, choose whether to delete the snapshot and its children if there are multiple snaps or just the selected snapshot. This time, select DELETE ALL as shown below.

Confirm the DELETE ALL by clicking on the button.

From the Recent Task window, you will see the status of the DELETE ALL Snapshot in progress.

How to Revert to a Snapshot

Use this option to restore the virtual machine state saved in the Snapshot. To revert a virtual machine to a snapshot in VMware, follow these steps. Open the VMware vSphere client and log in to your vSphere environment as shown above.

Locate the VM, Select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, host, or vApp etc, and select the virtual machine you want to revert.

Click on the “Snapshots” button on the toolbar, then select the snapshot you want to revert to and click on the “Go to” button, then select “Snapshot.” Then click on “Yes” to confirm that you want to revert to the selected snapshot.

Wait for the virtual machine to revert to the selected snapshot. This may take some time, depending on the size of the virtual machine. Please take note of the following actions before reverting a VM.

- When you revert to a snapshot, you immediately restore the parent snapshot of the virtual machine.
- When you revert to a snapshot, disks that you added or changed after the snapshot was taken are reverted to the snapshot point. For example, when you take a snapshot of a virtual machine, add a disk, and revert the snapshot, the disks added are removed.
- Independent disks are also removed when you revert to a snapshot that was taken before the disk was added. If the latest snapshot includes an independent disk, its contents do not change when you revert to that snapshot.

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Edit a VMware Snapshot

This operation edits a snapshot name and description. In this way, you will be able to identify your snapshots correctly when needed.

Locate the VM, Select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, host, or vApp etc. Select the virtual machine you want to edit the snapshot on. Click on Snapshots and then select the EDIT button as shown below.

On the Edit snapshot dialog box, modify the name, and enter the description as your wish. This is optional as well.

That is all! By following these steps, you have learned how to manage snapshots on VMware snapshots.

I hope you found this blog post helpful on how to Manage VMware Snapshots: Delete or Edit or Revert a Snapshot. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment section.