Creating and managing snapshots

You can create and manage virtual machine snapshots for a VMware instance.

Create a snapshot

Steps to create a new snapshot for a virtual machine.

1. In Cloud Automation Manager main menu, go to Deployed Instances > Templates
2. Open a VMWare deployed instance and go to Snapshots tab. Alternatively, in the Resource Details section, select View Snapshot from the overflow menu. It opens the Snapshots tab automatically wherein a resource is selected by default on the left-hand side. The snapshots of that selected resource are displayed on the right-hand side.
3. Click Create Snapshot to create a new snapshot.
4. Enter the Name and an optional Description of the snapshot.
5. If Snapshot virtual machine's memory (needs more time) and Quiesce guest file system (Needs VMware tools installed) options are in enabled state, select as per your requirement. These two options are enabled only if your virtual machine is in power on state. In case of power off state, the No additional features option is selected by default.
6. Click Create. A notification is displayed confirming the successful creation of the snapshot. The newly created snapshot is listed on the right-hand side along with the other snapshots of the virtual machine. You can view the logs in the Activity > Others section of the instance Overview tab. Click View Details to view details of a snapshot log record.

Manage snapshots

You can view details of a snapshot, delete a snapshot, revert to a snapshot, or revert to the latest snapshot.

• From the overflow menu of a snapshot, perform the following operations to manage a snapshot:

  • Click View Details to view the details of a snapshot in read-only mode. Click Close to go back to the Snapshots tab.
  • To revert to a particular snapshot, click Revert to snapshot.
  • Click Delete and enter "delete" in the confirmation window and click Delete.

• To restore to the parent snapshot of the current state of a virtual machine, click Revert to Latest. Enter "revert" in the confirmation window and click Revert to complete the operation.

Note: Cloud Automation Manager adds the size of the following associated files to determine the overall size of a snapshot:

• .mem - File created if the memory flag is set to "true". It stores the memory state of the virtual machine.
• .vmsn - Metadata file for a snapshot.
• .vmdk - Files created to store the difference of the current state of the disk with the state of the disk at the time of snapshot creation.

These files are associated with a specific snapshot. However, the .vmdk files of the parent snapshots are not included.