Continuing on the previous post on all things snapshot. A few more questions today:
- What happens when I delete a snapshot? Do I loose data?
R. You loose a recovery point but not the data, regardless, if it is the first snapshot, the snapshot in the middle or the last one in the snapshot tree. Let’s take a look at a few examples:
A. You take a snapshot, create a file within the guest OS, take another snapshot and remove that file. Then you delete that snapshot. Whether that snapshot was in the middle of the chain or the first/last one, that file is no longer recoverable.
B. You take a snapshot, create a file A, take another snapshot, create file B. You remove the first snapshot. File A is till there. You can no longer recover to the point in time where file had not existed yet however.
- If I recover a VM from a snapshot what happens if I then delete the snapshot?
R. The VM continues to operate just like it used to while the snapshot was still in place. The only difference is that once the snapshot is deleted since the disks no longer share blocks with the snapshot the data is now owned by the VM.
- Can I recover a VM from an orphan snapshot?
R. Yes, absolutely. If you delete a VM but keep a snapshot you can later restore from that snapshot. KB-6194 Cloning from AHV Orphaned Snapshots explains how to do that.