VM with a 900GB snapshot!

[Ross_Walter]

greetings everyone!

Some background:

1) We are using ESX 3.5 Update 4 with vCenter 4 Update 1, on Netapp storage connected via NFS to the ESX servers.

2) I have a Win2K3 VM which had a 😧 disk which was a 900+Gb .vmdk disk which I migrated all files to an iSCSI connected volume.

3) Before I migrated the data, I took a VM snapshot, added the iSCSI enhanced vNIC, and configured this in the OS. And another snapshot was taken just in case.

4) 900+Gb data was copied to the iSCSI volume.

5) VM was powered off to remove the 900+Gb 😧 disk.

6) VM powered on and using the iSCSI disk ok.

Unfortunately I forgot about committing the 2 snapshots… and a month later I noticed that the VM is being shown in vCenter as having a 923Gb snapshot!

The Storage View tab for the cluster shows the size of the snapshot!

Looking in the VM folder, the delta files are not nearly this big:

Looking at the volume via the console, the files are not showing a 900Gb snap:

So is vCenter thinking that the VM has a 900Gb snapshot because I removed the 900Gb 😧 disk .vmdk file from the VM properties?

I really don’t want to wait around for 3 years to commit this snapshot!

So theoretically this VM only really has 2x 3Gb snaps, correct?! And shouldn’t take very long to commit, should it?!

Any thoughts please as to why VCenter thinks this VM has such a large snapshot?

[kopper27]

use vmware converter VM to VM inorder to remove that snapshot in a more secure way that commit using snapshot manager

http://www.vmwareinfo.com/2008/05/70gb-snapshot-yikes.html

[TomHowarth]

Well you will be pleased to know that you don't have a 900GB+ snap, the quickest and safest way to remove this is to use a V2V conversion, ( assuming you have the space to do so)

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author on "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://www.amazon.co.uk/VMware-VSphere-Virtual-Infrastructure-Security/dp/0137158009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256146240&sr=1-1]”.

Contributing author on "[VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410|http://www.amazon.co.uk/VMware-Certified-Professional-VSphere-Study/dp/0470569611]”.

[continuum]

looks like ...

The large disk 1 has one snapshot with 178 Mb.

Disk 2 has 2 snapshots each 3 Gb.

Disk 3 has no snapshots

Probably the vmsd file has bad entries so snapshot size is displayed incorrect.

At the moment I would not trust snapshot-manager operations - better clean up first.

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VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

[Mohammad1982 · Accepted solution]

You should be really happy to know that you dont have a 900G snapshot. To commit ( consolidate) the other two snapshots you can clone the Vm which is the safest way.

[Ross_Walter]

thanks Mohammad!

I did just clone the VM and the snapshots were all cleaned up. Doing a V2V would most likely have had the same successful result, but I thought that cloning would be easier!

thanks everyone for the responses.