What are snapshots?

Snapshots in VMware vCenter are a feature of VMware vSphere that allows administrators
to capture the state of a virtual machine at a specific point in time. Snapshots preserve the
virtual machine's disk and memory state, and can be used to revert a virtual machine to a
previous state in case of a problem or to preserve the state of the virtual machine for later
use.

Snapshots are useful for various purposes, such as:

1. Backing up a virtual machine: Snapshots can be used as a backup mechanism to
capture the state of a virtual machine before making changes, such as applying
updates or installing software.
2. Testing updates or changes: You can create a snapshot before testing updates or
changes, and then revert to the snapshot if the changes cause problems.
3. Preserving the state of a virtual machine: Snapshots can be used to preserve the
state of a virtual machine, so that you can revert to that state later.

Snapshots can be taken while the virtual machine is powered on or powered off. When
creating a snapshot, you can choose to capture the current state of the virtual disk and
memory, or just the disk. You can also choose to quiesce the file system to ensure data
consistency.

It's important to manage snapshots effectively, as they can impact virtual machine
performance and storage usage over time. To avoid this, you should regularly delete
snapshots that are no longer needed or consolidate them into a single snapshot.