You can set a virtual disk to independent mode to exclude the disk from any snapshots taken of its virtual machine.

Prerequisites

Power off the virtual machine and delete any existing snapshots before you change the disk mode. Deleting a snapshot involves committing the existing data on the snapshot disk to the parent disk.

Required privileges:
  • Virtual machine .Snapshot management.Remove Snapshot
  • Virtual machine.Configuration.Modify device settings

Procedure

  1. Right-click a virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
  2. On the Virtual Hardware tab, expand Hard disk, and select an independent disk mode option.
    Option Description
    Independent - Persistent

    Disks in persistent mode behave like conventional disks on your physical computer. All data written to a disk in persistent mode are written permanently to the disk.

    Independent - Nonpersistent

    Changes to disks in nonpersistent mode are discarded when you power off or reset the virtual machine. With nonpersistent mode, you can restart the virtual machine with a virtual disk in the same state every time. Changes to the disk are written to and read from a redo log file that is deleted when you power off or reset.

  3. Click OK.