Merge Hyper-V Checkpoints or Snapshots | Windows Server 2019 [HYPER V TUTORIAL 04]

[@TechAreaNetwork]

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[@zomgoose]

Very clear and concise demonstration. Great job and thank you!

[@RRMSASESphere]

Excellent video, the best out of the 3 I watched about this topic. You covered everything the others left out. Thanks for being thorough.

[@TechAreaNetwork]

Thanks for your lovely feedback.

[@allaboutpcs5739]

Not sure why you did this through disk option. Can you please elaborate on why you have taken longer and confusing path than simple path of merging the checkpoints. Just delete the snapshot and it will merge with the parent disk.

[@SA-zx8zj]

Excellent tutorials (set of 5)

[@2root2]

Excellent tutorial thank you

[@LyncSoftConsulting]

Very nice tutorial thanks for sharing

[@SafSopNorLai]

nice video but couple issues that the video doesn't explain: 1. Why merge? 2. why don't we just delete the all the checkpoints up until the last one and then merge it to the "Mother" .vhdx file?

[@TechAreaNetwork]

1) Snapshot file (.avhdx) is a differencing disk that is associated with the parent virtual hard disk (.vhdx). When a differencing disk is created, a parent VHD becomes read-only and all writes are sent to the differencing disk. More differencing disks that are present there, longer the process can take. The performance of a Virtual Machine's HDD will become poor. This is where Hyper-V virtual disk merge comes in. To improve read performance, it is good to remove unnecessary differencing disks. 2) To respond to your 2nd question let me be very frank. I never try it out to delete the checkpoints before the merger process. Well, I think if I did so, I could not find the .avhdx files from the Hyper V Management console where I mandatorily need the .avhdx files to be merged with each other. Thanks for your queries. Stay tuned..

[@marvinlear5848]

This is info from a newbie to this, but I find that deleting checkpoints from the same branch effectively merges them into the 'Now' checkpoint ('Now' is the current/most recent state of your VM). It seems that 'Now' is 'incremental' in that it relies on parent checkpoints to save some data (so it doesn't have to re-save data that is identical between them), so deleting a checkpoint that is parent to 'Now' will force Hyper-V to decide what data in that checkpoint will be needed by 'Now', and then merge it into 'Now' so that the checkpoint can be safely deleted. Keep in mind that checkpoints that are outside of the 'Now' branch, or are at a later point in time than 'Now' (due to previously reverting to a checkpoint maybe? ...this bit of info I read on a Microsoft help site) will be deleted outright with no merging occurring (as you would expect and want).

[@SA-zx8zj]

That is probably why checkpoint disk is larger than the parent dis in some cases - new data gets added to checkpoint, not the parent-disk@@TechAreaNetwork

[@Andrea_Bassi]

Thanks for the useful videos. I have a question: If you have a Hyper-V cluster (with a cluster shared volume), you can manage checkpoints the same way or you have to manage it differently?

[@TechAreaNetwork]

Thanks for your nice query. No matter where your Virtual HDD files are residing. The method will always be same in case of merging Checkpoints or Snapshots.

[@Andrea_Bassi]

@@TechAreaNetwork Thank you!

[@nelaking1059]

in my case .... i have no check point trees .. but AVHDX files is there like 3 of them. so if i merge them i'll start from the latest file down to the oldest file?....

[@arunmishra6151]

Sir, I have a question if we want to rename one vhdx and we have multiple avhdx file then do we need to rename all child avhdx, or only parent vhdx🙏🙏🙏🙏

[@SBGSinfoLifestyle]

so nice lovely work

[@TechAreaNetwork]

Thanks a lot. !!

[@SBGSinfoLifestyle]

@@TechAreaNetwork welcome

[@alvinkane23]

Question sir.. it is okie if I can just simply add action "SAVE" to my Hyper V, then delete the checkpoint subtree! u think it will automatically merge the avhdx to the VHDX?

[@TechAreaNetwork]

Hi !! Thanks for your query. Here is some information for you: The Merger process takes place like below: 1) Power Off the VM 2) Delete the snapshot 3) Wait patiently for the AVHDX to merge with the VHDX. This might take a long time, depending on the snapshot file size. 4) Finally power On the VM. Info: 1) After completing the merger process, the AVHDX will be deleted by the system itself. 2) The VM must be powered off before starting the merge process of the AVHDX to VHDX. 3) Forcefully stopping this process can corrupt your VHD or VHDX

[@alvinkane23]

@@TechAreaNetwork thanks a lot for this answer it really helps me

[@gabrielmojica]

Hello! The VM have to be off for this process?

[@jmpt19]

Hello Sir, can I ask, does merging and deleting the subtrees erase all the changes I made? Let us say that in snapshot 1 I created a file but in snapshot 2 I deleted it. When merging does it maintain deleted?

[@TechAreaNetwork]

*Hi !! Thanks for your query and sorry for the late reply too.* See, merging snapshots always maintains the latest state of a VM. As per your given example, the latest state is not containing the file. So, after merging you will certainly not be able to get that file. *Thanks for showing your interest toward our Hyper-V series. Stay tuned for more such videos.*

[@christophelecornu5309]

Excellent tutorial thank you