Snapshots
A snapshot is reproduction of the virtual
machine just as it was when you took the snapshot. The snapshot includes the
state of the data on all virtual machine disks and the virtual machine power
state (on, off, or suspended). You can take a snapshot when a virtual machine
is powered on, powered off, or suspended.
When you create a snapshot, the system creates a
delta disk file for that snapshot in the datastore and writes any changes to
that delta disk. You can later revert to the previous state of the virtual
machine.
The
VirtualMachine
object has
methods for creating snapshots, reverting to any snapshot in the tree, and
removing snapshots.
Virtual Machine Snapshots
Snapshot hierarchies can become fairly complex.
For example, assume that, in the example in
Figure 1,
you revert to
snapshot_a
. You might then work
with and make changes to the
snapshot_a
virtual machine, and
create a new snapshot, creating, in effect, a branching tree.