Snapshot vs VMWare Snapshot

[Gizmo_oO]

Hi,
i am new to Freenas and i have a Question.
I have crated a Volume RAIDZ1 with 3x HDD´s. It is working perfect :)

On this Volume there are VMWare Disks AND other normal Files....
I have turned on Snapshot, NOT the VMWARE Snapshot option. Now my Question is, is this Snapshot consistent if i have to restore a Snapshot?
Is the normal Snapshot option valid for VMWare Disks to restore or should i use the VMWare Snapshot option?

Regards
Gizmo

 

[IceBoosteR]

Hi,

the normal ZFS are always consistent as it snapshots all the data on the specific dataset at the point where the snapshot is taken. It ca happen, that this causes some inconsistency on virtual machines, as there are mybe snapshotted in a moment where some writes occur, which confuses the OS of the VM if you roll them back. VMWare snapshots connects to the VMWare host, freezing the VMs from the host side, then snapshots thr filesystem, and de-freeze the VMs again so all the data is consisten. So VMWare snapshots do not create other snapshots ;)
You should use the option if you are running VMs on your server.

 

[Gizmo_oO]

Ok, so is it a problem to turn on VMSnapshot and Normal Snapshot on one Volume?

 

[IceBoosteR]

Ok, so is it a problem to turn on VMSnapshot and Normal Snapshot on one Volume?

No, as you need the normal ones to enable VMware ones.

 

[Gizmo_oO]

ah okay, perfect, thx :)

 

[IceBoosteR]

ah okay, perfect, thx :)

Its only like ou instruct FreeNAS to freeze your VMs, so that the normal snapshots are "more" consistent ;)