Professional VMware vSphere 7.x: Snapshot Deletion and Datastore Free Space Requirements

How much additional free space on the datastore is required to delete the snapshot, committing the snapshot delta disk to the base disk?

Question

A virtual machine with a single 100 GB virtual machine disk file has a single 20 GB snapshot.

The virtual machine is powered off.

How much additional free space on the datastore is required to delete the snapshot, committing the snapshot delta disk to the base disk? (Choose the best answer.)

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

A.

The correct answer is C. 20 GB.

When a snapshot is created in VMware vSphere, it creates a delta disk, which is a file that tracks all changes made to the virtual machine's disk since the snapshot was created. When a snapshot is deleted, the changes in the delta disk are merged into the original virtual disk, and the delta disk is removed.

In this scenario, the virtual machine has a single 100 GB virtual disk file and a 20 GB snapshot. When the snapshot is deleted, the 20 GB delta disk will be merged into the 100 GB virtual disk, resulting in a single 100 GB virtual disk without any snapshots.

During the snapshot deletion process, vSphere will need to create a new temporary file to merge the delta disk with the base disk. This temporary file will require disk space on the datastore. The size of the temporary file will be equal to the size of the delta disk, which is 20 GB in this case.

Therefore, to delete the snapshot and commit the changes to the virtual disk, vSphere will need an additional 20 GB of free space on the datastore. The correct answer is C. 20 GB.