Additional Virtualization Discussions

Netapp snapshots & VMWare snapshots

karl_pottie
17,697 Views

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.

21 REPLIES 21
Public