Deleting Snapshots - procedure?

[sternfan]

Hi all,
I have a VM that I use for testing purposes which is now up to 14 snapshots. To save drive space I want to delete a bunch of them (say 1 thru 10). Reading the manual - it is a pretty straight and safe procedure, but I just want to be sure.

- Should the snapshots be deleted in any particular order? Oldest to newest etc?
- when deleting a snapshot - there's no "merging" going on - it doesn't affect the current VM correct?

Any info greatly appreciated,
Rob

[MarkCranness]

Deleting snapshots at the bottom first will generally be faster, but the end result will be the same regardless of which order you delete them in.

MAKE SURE you have plenty of free hard disk space, I recommend at least as much free space as the total size of all current base and snapshot VDI files. If you run out of space while a snapshot is being deleted, bad things may happen.
Always use the VB UI to delete snapshots, NEVER manually delete the snapshot differencing VDIs files.

Deleting a snapshot does not affect the current VM context.
Merging does go on, between the various 'differencing VDI files', but don't let that technical detail confuse you.

Instead of deleting the snapshots, it may be faster and easier to create a clone of the current VM state, detach the existing disk and re-attach the clone.
(Note: The clone will have a different UUID than the original, which may affect licensing tests and/or Linux drive mappings.)

See here for how to clone the current state of a VM disk:
HOWTO: Clone a snapshot or clone the current state of a disk.

[mpack]

It may be quicker and less risky to clone the VM, using the v4.1.x cloning feature - creating a full clone, and naturally telling it to clone only the latest state, not all the snapshots too.