IGT Part 5: Hyper-V snapshots are not gone until the VM is powered off

This article is part of a series on Incoming Google Traffic (IGT).

Evidently, some Hyper-V administrators are puzzled by that platform’s snapshot behavior.  I am starting to see visitors come to VCritical when searching for:

hyper-v “merge in progress”
hyper-v “paused-critical”

This is exactly the issue that I wrote about recently.  With VMware ESX, administrators can create and delete snapshots on running VMs — without incurring downtime.  Deleted Hyper-V snapshots are only merged when the VM is powered off.  That could mean twice the number of reboots during VM guest OS maintenence.

Related posts:

1. Half the VM reboots on Patch Tuesday
2. Hyper-V snapshots: not for production
3. Snapshots that shoot back
4. Exclusive: Hyper-V 2013 Product Roadmap
5. IGT Part 3: One-VM-per-LUN doubters