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When you take a snapshot of a data or root volume on VMware, &PRODUCT; uses an efficient storage technique to improve performance. A snapshot is not immediately exported from vCenter to a mounted NFS share and packaged into an OVA file format. This operation would consume time and resources. Instead, the original file formats (e.g., VMDK) provided by vCenter are retained. An OVA file will only be created as needed, on demand. To generate the OVA, &PRODUCT; uses information in a properties file (*.ova.meta) which it stored along with the original snapshot data. For upgrading customers: This process applies only to newly created snapshots after upgrade to &PRODUCT; 4.2. Snapshots that have already been taken and stored in OVA format will continue to exist in that format, and will continue to work as expected.