So I help run a lab, which has multiple pods for studying IP telephony (of the cisco variety). All of the pods run virtualized instances of call manager, etc...and what we typically do is build out a pod (including all VMs), and then clone those VM's to the other pods. Then we create snapshots (starting points), for different labs (with some labs having quite a bit of pre-confguration done already). This is starting to eat up a tremendous amount of storage on our end, as we have say 12 pods, all running the same VMs, with the same exact snapshots. Now I know how snapshots traditionally work, and what their purpose is. My question is, from a 'lets get creative perspective,' is it possible:
- If all the vm's start from a copy of the exact same disk, is it not possible to share snapshots someway? Even if its unsupported?
Any ideas?
-J