Virtual Machine Archiving

VM archiving is a comprehensive solution that incorporates traditional backup and virtual machine archiving in a single operation. Shutting down, relocating, and archiving inactive virtual machines can solve the problem of virtual machine sprawl, when virtual machines are created but not cleaned up; this issue is especially common in development and testing environments.

You can use a three-stage process to free up resources and storage:

1. Shut down virtual machines based on resource usage as identified by key vCenter resource indicators. VM resource management criteria can be used to power off VMs based on the virtual machine's CPU usage, disk usage, and network usage. Powering down inactive virtual machines frees up resources on ESX hosts.
2. Relocate powered off virtual machines from expensive Tier 1 disks to Tier 2 disk storage or tape, using the VMware Storage vMotion capability. This is sometimes referred to as VM migration. When you relocate VMs, you can archive them at the same time, or as a separate step.
3. Archive powered off virtual machines. As part of virtual machine archiving, virtual machine disks are deleted from the ESX server when the backup is completed. When a virtual machine is archived, the Annotations section of the virtual machine's Summary tab in the vCenter client shows Archived: Yes. VMDKs are deleted, freeing up the space that had been allocated to them on the Datastore. Virtual machine configurations are retained on the production storage or ESX, which points to the backed-up data. If needed the VM can be recalled, in its place.

You do not have to use all three stages and can instead use any that fits your needs.