We're a dev shop so we make heavy use of VMs and snapshots for testing. This works great most of the time, but occasionally I discover some setting in a VM that needs to be changed across all my snapshots.
For example, I recently created a Vista VM and only gave it 512MB of RAM. The VM already has about 18 snapshots, and I'd really, really like to avoid recreating all of them if possible.
Is there a quick way to propagate VMWare-level changes like this across all the VM's snapshots?
I'm using ESX 3.5 but advice from any other versions (especially Workstation) is welcome.
Best Answer
How long have those snapshots been in place? Typically you don't want a snapshot around longer than a few days otherwise you're liable to run into issues. Best thing I can recommend is either committing those snapshots (might take awhile if they're large/have been running for awhile. Virtual Center might time out but its still deleting in the ESX if its really large). Snapshots are just delta files of a particular VM so there's no way of applying system-wide changes across multiple ones.
Update:
Why snapshots can stop machines for long time: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1002836
VMware Admin guide (PDF): http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_admin_guide.pdf
Horror story of "the long snapshot" which should be quite painful for you guys if you decide to commit: http://www.vmwarez.com/2006/11/beware-long-snapshot.html