.. _vmware_snapshot_maintenance:

VMware snapshot maintenance
---------------------------

It is not recommend to keep more than two snapshots at any one time as this can negatively
affect performance. Refer to the VMware Knowledge Base topic on 
Best practices for virtual machine snapshots in the VMware environment.

Unused or deprecated snapshots on VMware are caused by multiple snapshot creation and deletion.
These can be removed to save space. Note however that these snapshots and disk images may not show
in the vSphere GUI admin tool (Snapshot Manager). 

Follow the steps recommended by VMware to remove deprecated, orphaned, unused and old snapshots
via your VMware administrator. Pay special attention to the ``.vmx`` configuration file to avoid
removing live disks. 

Always perform a backup and export of your data. We recommend shutting down your
|VOSS Automate|  instance(s) during a maintenance window in order to remove all unused images and to
create a fresh snapshot.



.. |VOSS Automate| replace:: VOSS Automate