Steven Kurylo wrote:
Correct. But as I understand, snapshots in VMware work similar to
transaction logs in databases. The virtual disk file is locked
in its current state and further changes are temporarily written
to separate files until the snapshot is comitted or rolled back.
Yes.
So if you want to backup/copy an entire VM with the guarantee of
consistent hard disk state, you need to shut it down. Copying
a multi gigabyte virtal disk file is bound to take quite some time.
I don't see how you draw that conclusion from the above. You only
copy the frozen state to the backup, which is consistent.
Looking through some vmware documentation they mention something like
DBHammer will have issues. You also have the option of running
pre-snapshot custom scripts. So you could stop the DB or other
sensitive application, start the snapshot, and then restart the DB - but
not the entire VM.
So that gives you downtime of only a few seconds (unless your
application takes longer than that to restart...)
