Do you delete old snapshots before making a new one?

Snapshots are a very handy tool for a System Administrator, but they can quickly turn into a nightmare if they are not managed properly. Snapshots take far more hard drive space than a virtual machine without, and if you don’t clean up your snapshots you may run out of drive space.

Figure: Snapshots are useful, but they can take up a lot of space When you delete a snapshot you can no longer restore the virtual machine to the point in time the snapshot was taken. Deleting a snapshot does not affect any other snapshots, nor will it affect the current state of the virtual machine.

Set yourself a calendar reminder 3 weeks after you make a snapshot so you remember to apply the snapshot to the Virtual Machine (assuming you are happy with the virtual machine after the snapshot).

1. In the Hyper-V Manager , click on the virtual machine you want to apply the snapshot to
2. In the Snapshots window, right click on the snapshot you wish to apply and click Delete Snapshot…
3. Confirm the snapshot deletion.
4. Wait for the merge process to complete (this may take a while if you have had the snapshot running for a long time and it has grown large in size).