See for example this blog entry Impact of ESX snapshot backups on Microsoft database servers that shows these problems for a Windows Domain Controller. on several clients it was noted that the Sync driver caused problems with some DBs on the guest. if you wanted to flush all pending IO to disk, and thus have a crash consistent snapshot, you had to use the Sync driver before ESX 3.5u2 the VMware tools contained a Sync driver I think my previous explanation was perhaps not clear enough. The question is should I take the snapshow with the virtual machine off? or I can do it with the virtual machine on as long as I check the 'Snapshot the virtual machine's memory' option?Īlso I am still not clear what this 'Snapshot the virtual machine's memory' option is for.

Then you risk crashing your db during the snapshot's quiescing process.'Īccording to that answer and as per my understanding of that answer, if the snapshot was taken without checking the 'Snapshot the virtual machine's memory' option, then it would create a crash consistent backup.

You're not using volume shadow service that's part of vmware tools now, Those, it is cleaner to shutdown the vm if you can. Things in memory, like sql db's, exchange, and things of that sort. CrashĬonsistent is typically ok, unless you are running apps that keep Snapshot, I will shutdown a vm before taking a snapshot. 'Yes, when you don't snapshot the virtual memory, the snapshot is aĬrash consistent backup of the vm.

Drive snapshot to virtual machine