The presence of redundant delta disks can adversely affect the virtual machine performance. You can combine such disks without violating a data dependency. After consolidation, redundant disks are removed, which improves the virtual machine performance and saves storage space.

Snapshot consolidation is useful when snapshot disks fail to compress after a Revert, Delete, or Delete all operation. This might happen, for example, if you delete a snapshot but its associated disk does not commit back to the base disk.

Prerequisites

Required privilege: Virtual machine.Snapshot management.Remove Snapshot

Procedure

  1. Navigate to a virtual machine in the vSphere Client inventory and click the Snapshots tab.
  2. Perform the necessary snapshot operations.
    If the virtual machine snapshot files must be consolidated, the Consolidation is required message appears.
  3. Click the Consolidate button.
    The Consolidate dialog box appears.
  4. Click OK.
  5. To verify that the consolidation is successful, check the Needs Consolidation column.
    1. Navigate to an inventory object that contains a list of virtual machines, for example a vCenter Server instance, a host, or a cluster.
    2. Click the VMs tab and click Virtual Machines.
    3. Click View Columns Icon.
      The Show Columns window appears.

      Display Snapshot Consolidation Column

    4. Select Needs Consolidation.
      A Yes status indicates that the snapshot files for the virtual machine must be consolidated. A Not Required status indicates that the files are consolidated.