Search for VM Snapshots from the Service Console
There are several ways to determine if you have virtual machines with snapshots. Why you would want to know has been covered In various other posts both here at VM /ETC as well as on the other virtualization blogs. It’s so important that the virtualization community has created different tools and scripts to identify and monitor snapshot files for administrators. So, when I read the post WWoIT - Wayne’s World of IT: Find VM snapshots in ESX/VC I had an experience that Aaron Delp described as “/HEADDESK” (when he commented on my uploading files with the VI Client post).
It may not be the fanciest of methods, but probably the quickest way to find VM snapshots is to use the ls command from the ESX Service Console. By piping the output with grep to find files with the snapshot extension, .vmsn, and using the recursive switch you can scan all the VMFS LUNs visible to an ESX host. That’s so simple it hurts!
To use the ls command to find snapshots do the following:
- Log in to the service console (use putty or mRemote for remote log in)
- Query for the snap shot files in the VMFS volumes
#ls -Ral /vmfs/volumes/* |grep .vmsn
Click the screen shot for a larger image.
Check out the whole Wayne’s World of IT post linked above for 3 other methods of finding snap shots.
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Tags: esx, how to, scripts, serviceconsole, snapshots, virtualmachine, vmware
