Creating virtual machine snapshots

Often, we have situations where we need to preserve a specific state, virtual machine snapshots provide such a functionality. To be more precise, a snapshot can even preserve a running state of a virtual machine. This comes in handy in development use cases and in general, is a more reliable known good configuration state. Furthermore, the ability to take snapshots also aids in other extended features such as linked clones and enables backup capabilities for use with vSphere Data Protection or other third-party solutions.