Snapshots hang VM

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Recently for one or two of our virutal machine's when committing snapshots, the virtual machine hangs and we cannot ping for a few seconds. Have you guys experienced this before? I google'd but did not find much.

 

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Whats the IO like on your storage as that's where I would be looking first.

 

We can take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine, even while it is running. We can then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a snapshot to the virtual machine.
Most important thing, that we need to remember - Do not edit a virtual hard disk when it is used by a virtual machine that has snapshots.

 

What version are you on Prof?

 

Completely forgot about this post... got side tract... This only happens on one VM and the version is ESX 4.1

 

Its what I first thought but since it only happens to one VM and there are other VMs on the same data store so I kind of ruled that out...

 

Disk alignment issues? what's the OS?

 

Its Windows Server 2008 64 bit. It has 2 disks and both disks are on the same datastore.

 

ok, so it "shouldn't" be disk alignment as 2008 should align the disks correctly. I would have a look at Ricky El-Qasims site for vDisk Informer to see if that is the problem.

 

Thanks Simon, I will take a look at it tonight. Its one of those things I need to get resolved soon... been on the back burner for a little while.

 

To add a couple of more suggestion;

1) Manually create a snapshot and then delete all
2) Change CPU share to high
3) Reinstall VMTools
4) Disable then enable CBT(Changed Block Tracking) this will require a restart of the VM VMware KB: Changed Block Tracking (CBT) on virtual machines

Would be good if you could tell us more about what this VM does, exchange, sharepoint etc, how long is the snapshot staying open for? also why are the snapshot being generated? i.e backup or something else and lastly when are they being done(business hours or not)