On 4 October 2010 23:56, Turbo Fredriksson wrote: > Will the utilization on the disk be 10Gb + that > of the snapshots? Or is the snapshot size included > in the 10Gb I created?
It will be 10GB + each snapshot. Each snapshot could get to be 10GB also, in the extreme case that you modified at least one bit on each 1MB of the entire virtual disk. Understand how snapshots work : when you take a snapshot, the existing base virtual disk file (and any existing snapshot differencing disks) are frozen, and a new 'differencing disk' is created that contains any changes made to the virtual disk AFTER the snapshot is taken. Deleting a snapshot merges the data in the disks. AFAIK, deleting the topmost snapshot merges a differencing disk INTO the base virtual disk file, IIRC should not need any more disk space. Deleting other than the topmost snapshot merges two differencing disks, and during the merge, host FS usage will increase and only drop when the merge is finished and one of the differencing disks is deleted. (In general, for mininal time and FS space, to delete all snapshots while retaining their changes, start deleting at the top, and to delete all snapshots while discarding their changes (after a revert for example), start deleting at the bottom.) > I don't get a clear answer to this in the documentation... > If it's not included, how can I 'apply' the changes > to the top-parent image, and scratch the snapshots? > Not ideal, but I can use snapshots only for testing > purposes... Delete the snapshots, starting at the top. It may feel scary, but deleting snapshots retains the current state of the virtual disks and only deletes intermediary info needed to restore to a middle point. I've suggested the wording be made clearer, but that wasn't thought to be a good idea...: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=24467 > ... so I often run the FS 'to the brim', leaving my > VM's not able to increase the disk image files. Then DO NOT use snapshots, or do so very carefully. If your disk becomes full while there are snapshots, there is a risk of VM corruption or even total loss. Recovery will be difficult. -- Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Virtualization is moving to the mainstream and overtaking non-virtualized environment for deploying applications. Does it make network security easier or more difficult to achieve? Read this whitepaper to separate the two and get a better understanding. http://p.sf.net/sfu/hp-phase2-d2d _______________________________________________ VBox-users-community mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vbox-users-community
