Deleting snapshots

In this quick recipe, we are going to delete the snapshots we created earlier in the Creating snapshots recipe, using libvirt.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we are only going to need the following:

• A libvirt host with the QEMU toolset
• The snapshots we created in the Creating snapshots recipe

How to do it...

To delete a snapshot, follow these steps:

1. List all snapshots present on the host:

root@kvm:~# virsh snapshot-list kvm1
 Name                      Creation Time             State
------------------------------------------------------------
 1492797458                2017-04-21 17:57:38 +0000 running
 1492802417                2017-04-21 19:20:17 +0000 running
 kvm1_ext_snapshot_renamed 2017-04-21 18:08:49 +0000 disk-snapshot

root@kvm:~#

2. Delete the latest snapshot based on the creation time:

root@kvm:~# virsh snapshot-delete kvm1 --snapshotname 1492802417
Domain snapshot 1492802417 deleted

root@kvm:~#

3. List the remaining snapshots:

root@kvm:~# virsh snapshot-list kvm1
 Name   ...