Netapp snapshots & VMWare snapshots

[karl_pottie]

We use Netapp snapshots/snapvault as a way to take backups of VMs.

This is done using a script that does something like this:

1. look for all VMs on a datastore

2. take a VMWare snapshot of all VMs on that datastore to quiesce the .vmdk file

3. take a netapp snapshot of the datastore

4. delete all VMWare snapshots taken in step 2.

All of this is done to ensure that the .vmdk file is not written while taking a Netapp snapshot.

Now, I'm wondering: as far as I know, the NetApp snapshot is an atomic action for an entire volume. So does it actually make a difference to quiesce the VMs beforehand, given that all .vmdk files of a VM are on the same volume ?

We've been successful in restoring non-quiesced .vmdks so I'm wondering if anybody has an opinion on this.

[kevin_doran]

I've had issues with VMs snapshots also, even following the NetApp best practices. It seems that every so often the snaps will lock up during the removal of them. Once the remove times out, it powers off the VM and can't power it back on. Everytime I have to re-add the hard disks to the VM's because something in the configuration still points them back to the -000001.vmdk files, yet they don't exist because in the snap removal process it completes far enough to write back the changes to the original vmdk. I have since just stopped doing the VM layer snapshots and have reverted to NetApp only. There are some snap issues resolved in update 5 but I don't think I'll take that risk having downtime again.