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72 Posts

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March 4th, 2014 13:00

Snapshot behavior in vmware when quiescing a snapshot

On our old storage (not EQL), if I took snapshots with the quiesce option in vmware, I would get a hierarchy that looked something like this:

base
|
|----Snap 1
           |
           |-----Snap 2
                       |
                       |--- You are here

The "you are here" would be a child of the snapshot I just took.

I've noticed that with VMs on luns on the EQL, I get something like this:

base
|
|----Snap 1
           |
           |------You are here
           |
           |------ Snap 2

or

base
|
|--- you are here
|
|---- Snap 1

So basically my current state is no longer a child of the snapshot I just took. It's like the snapshot is put aside and I continue working as if nothing happened.

Is this expected behaviour? What's causing this change in behaviour? At a previous job I was used to seeing the behaviour in my first little picture and at my current job I was seeing it as well but now with the EQL, it seems to be different.

This only happens with the quiesce option alone. With nothing selected, memory only or mem+quiesce, it works like I expect.

Can someone explain why I'm seeing this change in behaviour?

Thanks

72 Posts

March 5th, 2014 11:00

I don’t use the Virtual Storage Manager installed in vmware (I assume that’s what VSM is). I’m talking about making a vm level snapshot in vmware, not a lun level snapshot.

I thought this might be caused by change block tracking as I discovered that after using Veeam to backup my templates, it appears to have enabled that option and every vm since has had it turned on. I cloned a couple templates to test, one with ctk disabled and one with ctk enabled and of course, now I can’t reproduce the problem. On the vm where I first noticed this, it’s still doing the unexpected behavior (ctk is set to false but maybe it doesn’t honor that because of existing snaps?)

24 Posts

March 10th, 2014 16:00

use smart copies;  smart copies are like snap shots but they are created with Autosnap shot Manager for VMware which is more granular.

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