Hi,
We currently have an Esxi 5.5 used as a testing environment. Vms are used to test/debug our softwares deployment/upgrade.
To be able to test on multiple software versions, we have a snapshot for each software version (they are on the same snapshot tree level). When somebody wants to revert to a clean state he has to go to the snapshot manager and select the snapshot he wants to revert to.
To be able to store the different software versions in snapshot on the same tree level, you first have to create one snapshot (and then you can create sub-snapshots at the same level below this one). It means that all our VMs are always running with a minimum of 2 snapshots. The problem is that our server is not a beast and when using snapshots on multiple VM's I/Os and therefore general performance are decreasing significantly.
I'm aware that snapshots are not made to be used permanently because it can quickly cause performance issues, especially on servers where hardware is not top notch (and it's the case for us).
I'm looking for some general guidance on how to provide a testing environment with multiple versions of a software as a VM base which could be:
- restored quickly (strong need) to the initial state by the users
- taking the minimum disk space possible (as we can't simply create 30 VMs, one for each software version for example)
Thank you for your help