The snapshots are handled by the array and the copy-on-write (COW) operations that are needed to maintain the snapshot. Snapshots on vVols are offloaded to the array that creates the snapshot using the array-side native operations. There are situations where performance is not affected when running VMs with snapshots. This leads to a very big performance impact. This is because VMware has to update the table that keeps the reference to the block's location, either the snapshot or the base disk. For write operations, a VM that needs to write a block that has not been written before will need twice as many write operations as well. Imagine that when you keep a snapshot for a VM, you basically double the amount of read IOPS.

There is also a heavy impact on host performance because the IOPS consumed by those VMs might negatively impact the performance of your storage device and hosts.

If there is a large number of delta files in a chain, a VM having many snapshots has a heavy performance impact on the applications running in those VM(s).

There are a couple of backup software products on the market that ensure there are no snapshots left behind when you back up your VMs.

Snapshots should not be kept over long periods of time because they grow over time with the changes to your VM.

You should not use a single snapshot for more than 72 hours.

In fact, VMware recommends that you use only two to three snapshots in a chain, not more. This does not mean that you have to create those 32 snapshots. If you don't have enough free space, you cannot delete your snapshot. Note that even to delete snapshots, you'll need free space on a datastore. This is why the provisioned storage size of a VM with snapshots can increase by some huge number and cause problems for your datastores.

The delta files can grow to the same size as the original base disk file if a lot of changes are made to the VM over time. There are those delta files in the VM's folder.So, if the base disk is missing, lost, or damaged, it's tough luck. A snapshot file is only a changelog of the original virtual disk you'll need the base disk to fully restore. Snapshots are not backups, and we all know that.Consolidation not required Some of VMware's best practices and recommendations for snapshots

Vmware disk consolidation needed