Delete a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot - Ansible module vmware_guest_snapshot

How to automate the delete of snapshot named “Ansible Managed Snapshot” in a VMware Virtual Machine “myvm” Ansible Playbook and vmware_guest_snapshot module.

How to Delete a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible?

I'm going to show you a live Playbook and some simple Ansible code.

I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot.

Ansible Delete a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot

community.vmware.vmware_guest_snapshot

Manages virtual machines snapshots in vCenter

Let's talk about the Ansible module vmware_guest_snapshot.

The full name is community.vmware.vmware_guest_snapshot, which means that is part of the collection of modules to interact with VMware, community-supported.

It manages virtual machine snapshots in vCenter.

Parameters

hostname string / username string / password string / datacenter string / validate_certs boolean - connection details

state string - present / absent / revert / remove_all

remove_children boolean - no/yes

snapshot_name string description string - Name/description of the virtual machine to work with

The following parameters are useful in order to Take a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot using the module vmware_guest_snapshot.

First of all, we need to establish the connection with VMware vSphere or VMware vCenter using a plethora of self-explicative parameters: hostname, username, password, datacenter, and validate_certs.

Once the connection is successfully established you could specify the desired snapshot state, in this case, "absent" to delete a snapshot. You could also manage a snapshot with the same Ansible module.

If you want to remove a snapshot you could also remove all the dependent snapshots using the parameter remove_children.

You need to specify the exact snapshot name that you would like to remove in the snapshot_name parameter.

Links

[community.vmware.vmware_guest_snapshot](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/vmware/vmware_guest_snapshot_module.html)

## Playbook

How to Delete a VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot with Ansible.

I'm going to show you how to Delete a snapshot of the Virtual Machine named "myvm" using Ansible Playbook named "Ansible Managed Snapshot" in your VMware vCenter.

code

vm_snapshot_remove.yml

``yaml


---
name: vm snapshot Playbook
  hosts: localhost
  become: false
  gather_facts: false
  collections:
    - community.vmware
  pre_tasks:
    - include_vars: vars.yml
  tasks:
    - name: remove snapshot
      vmware_guest_snapshot:
        hostname: "{{ vcenter_hostname }}"
        username: "{{ vcenter_username }}"
        password: "{{ vcenter_password }}"
        datacenter: "{{ vcenter_datacenter }}"
        validate_certs: "{{ vcenter_validate_certs }}"
        name: "{{ vm_name }}"
        folder: "{{ vm_folder }}"
        snapshot_name: "Ansible Managed Snapshot"
        state: absent



vars.yml

``yaml

---

vcenter_hostname: "vmware.example.com"

vcenter_datacenter: "vmwaredatacenter"

vcenter_validate_certs: false

vcenter_username: "[email protected]"

vcenter_password: "MySecretPassword123"

vm_name: "myvm"

vm_temp