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

Disk consolidation