14.6. Deleting virtual machine snapshots by using the command line

Prerequisites

• Optional: A child snapshot exists for the snapshot you want to delete.

  A child snapshot is created automatically when you have an active snapshot and create a new snapshot. If you delete a snapshot that does not have any children, you will lose any changes saved in the snapshot after it was created from its parent snapshot.

  To view the parent-child structure of snapshots in a VM, use the virsh snapshot-list --tree command. The following example shows Latest-snapshot as a child of Redundant-snapshot.

  # virsh snapshot-list --tree <vm-name>
  
  Clean-install-snapshot
    |
    +- Redundant-snapshot
        |
        +- Latest-snapshot

Procedure

• Use the virsh snapshot-delete command to delete the snapshot. For example, the following command deletes Redundant-snapshot from the Testguest1 VM:

  # virsh snapshot-delete Testguest1 Redundant-snapshot
  
  Domain snapshot Redundant-snapshot deleted

Verification

• To ensure that the snapshot that you deleted is no longer present, display the existing snapshots of the impacted VM and their parent-child structure:

  # virsh snapshot-list --tree <Testguest1>
  
  Clean-install-snapshot
    |
    +- Latest-snapshot

  In this example, Redundant-snapshot has been deleted and Latest-snapshot has become the child of Clean-install-snapshot.