The Delete Unused Snapshots for Virtual Machines action in VMware Aria Operations deletes snapshots that are older than the specified age from your datastores. Deleting unused snapshots reclaims wasted space in your environment.

How the Action Works

The Delete Unused Snapshots for Virtual Machine action comprises two dialog boxes. The first dialog box allows you to select the snapshot age criteria, which must be greater than one day. The second step allows you to select the snapshots to delete, and runs the Delete Unused Snapshots for Virtual Machine action.

The number of days that you specify for each virtual machine is the age of the snapshots based on the creation date. The Delete Unused Snapshots for Virtual Machine action retrieves the snapshot and displays the snapshot name, space consumed, and location so that you can evaluate the snapshots before you delete them.

When you click Begin Action, VMware Aria Operations displays a dialog box to indicate that the action has started. To track the status of the action, click the link in the dialog box and view the state of the action in Administration > Recent Tasks.

Where You Run the Action

For the supported objects and object levels, this action is available in the following locations in VMware Aria Operations :
  • Embedded just below the top menu.
  • From the left menu click Environment > Object Browser, select an object, click the Details tab, and click Views.
  • On the toolbar when you click Environment > Object Browser, select an object, click the Environment tab, and select an object in the list view.
  • In the Inventory list when you click Administration in the menu, click Inventory , then click the List tab, and select an object in the list.
  • In configured alert recommendations.
  • In the Object List and Topology Graph dashboard widgets.

Action Options

To ensure that you are submitting the action for the right objects, review the following information.

You first retrieve snapshots based on age, then select the snapshots to delete.

Table 1. Retrieve Snapshots
Option Description
Name Name of the virtual machine on which you are running the Delete Unused Snapshots for VM action.
Days Old Age of the snapshots to be deleted. This action retrieves snapshots for the virtual machine that are older than one day.
Host Name of the host with which the virtual machine is associated.
Parent vCenter

Name of the VMware Adapter as it is configured in VMware Aria Operations. The adapter manages the communication with the vCenter Server instance.
Select the snapshots to delete.
Table 2. Delete Snapshots
Option Description
Selected objects

Check box indicates whether the action is applied to the object. To not run the action on one or more objects, deselect the associated check boxes. This option is available when two or more objects are selected.

VM Name Name of the virtual machine from which the snapshot was created.
Snapshot Name Name of the snapshot in the datastore.
Snapshot Space (MB) Number of megabytes consumed by the snapshot.
Snapshot Create Time Date and time when the snapshot was created.
Snapshot Age Age of the snapshot in days.
Datacenter Name Name of the data center with which the datastore is associated.
Datastore Name Name of the datastore where the snapshot is managed.
Host Name Name of the host with which the datastore is associated.

After you click OK, the next dialog box provides the task ID and a link to the task list.

Table 3. Task ID Dialog Box
Option Description
Recent Tasks To view the status of the job and verify that the job finished, click Recent Tasks.
OK To close the dialog box without further action, click OK.

The Delete Unused Snapshots action creates a job for the retrieve snapshots action, and a job for the delete snapshots action.