vmware-snapshots failing when i try to revert to them on a clone.

[SMnasMAN]

Ive setup a test FN and ESXi setup, on 2x extra boxes i have to test/experiment with using FN vmware aware snapshots.

FN= FreeNAS-11.2-U7
esxi= 6.5u3

Expected result- I should be able to clone a snapshot, then add that clone/datastore as a NFS share, connect it to esxi, (register the .vmx) and revert to the snapshot of the that was taken by freenas of the running VM.

Problem: on esxi, revert to snapshot shows as "completed successfully" but the VM does not reflect that at all (the vm stays powered off).

more info:
Everything seems to be working right, i see esxi take the snapshot successfully when FN instructs it to do so (ie when FN is running its snapshot of my dataset). However once i mount the clone of the snapshot, when i click on manage snapshots in esxi, i dont see the screenshot of the VM (see 1st image below)

If i powerup the VM, wo reverting to the snapshot, i get "why did the computer shutdown unexpectedly" (this is as is expected, as i just have a normal normal crash-consistent backup, as im not using the esxi snapshot)

I have read all of the documentation on this topic, several times, however there is very little info in the FN offical docs. I have also read every FN forums post (and reddit) i can find on this subject, and i seem to be doing everything right.

screenshots:



on FN side:






on freenas, the mounted snapshot clone:


thanks

 

[HoneyBadger]

Expected result- I should be able to clone a snapshot, then add that clone/datastore as a NFS share, connect it to esxi, (register the .vmx) and revert to the snapshot of the that was taken by freenas of the running VM.

Problem: on esxi, revert to snapshot shows as "completed successfully" but the VM does not reflect that at all (the vm stays powered off).

FreeNAS by default (by design?) doesn't snapshot the running memory of the virtual machines. See this post for the code snippet from 11.2:

VMware (coordinated) snapshot not working properly

Hi all, I am using FreeNAS to serve iSCSI storage to my ESXi host, and configured the VMware-snapshot(BTW I feel it needs a better name so it won't get confused with the VM snapshot) in GUI. It appears working fine that it instructed vSphere to snapshot the VMs before a ZFS snapshot was made...

www.ixsystems.com

Quiesce files is expected to return to the "true" in 11.3 based on the bug report, but not memory.

Without snapping memory, you can't return to a running state.

 

[SMnasMAN]

awesome, thanks for clearing this up (and replying)!! now it makes sense.

so if Quiesce files is not set to true in the FN vmware snapshot script, and the script also does not (and never will) snapshot the VMs memory, what advantage is there to using zfs snaps of a nfs shared dataset , VS using zfs snaps of a nfs shared dataset + enabling VMware-Snapshot on the FN side?

(also, the FN manual/docs REALLY needs more detail added, in many areas)

thanks