What can be a consequence of failing to manage VM snapshots effectively?

Failing to manage VM snapshots effectively can indeed result in increased storage costs and potential performance issues for virtual machines. Snapshots are essentially a point-in-time representation of a VM’s state, and if they accumulate without proper management, they can consume substantial amounts of storage space. This can lead to increased costs if additional storage resources are required.

Additionally, when snapshots are not managed properly, the VM might exhibit degraded performance. Each snapshot introduces overhead, and having too many snapshots can significantly slow down operations, affecting the efficiency of the virtual machine. This can manifest as slower boot times, lag in application performance, or delays in committing changes to the base vDisk.

The other options highlight concepts that are either not directly related to VM snapshots or contradict the implications of poor management. For instance, while redundancy and availability are critical aspects of virtualization, they do not directly correlate with the mishandling of snapshots. Proper snapshot management is necessary to maintain an environment that supports those attributes, not enhance them through poor practices. Similarly, data integrity and resource allocation are not positively impacted through ineffective snapshot management and can instead suffer the consequences of increased complexity and resource consumption.