Cannot start guest due to msg.hbacommon.outofspace! (discard delta.vmdk?)

[Amrando]

Hello all-

I have a severe problem with a production server on ESX 3.0.2.

During an Exchange maintenance routine and copying the Exchange mailbox DB back to its operational disk, the system has run out of free disk space and the guest was shut down.  Now I cannot restart the guest because there is not enough free space to complete the required redo log. 

How can I DISCARD the redo log and prevent these snapshots from being recreated? I cannot add more disk space to this machine, and apparently I cannot copy the mailbox DB file from within one VMDK to another, because when I do so the snapshots created fill up the remaining free space of the host server. The system has created 150Gb of delta.vmdk's in the process.  How can I safely discard these and restart the server, and then repeat the file copy process WITHOUT duplicating this problem again? 

I need to perform a copy of files from one VMDK to another, while suppressing all snapshots, redo logs, etc.

Can this be done by editing the guest's disk configuration to enable Independent mode with Persistent change on all disks?

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

How can I DISCARD the redo log and prevent these snapshots from being recreated?

Usually a snapshot is created either manually or by a backup application. This is not related to the copy operation of the Exchange mailboxes. To find out how to resolve your issue and get rid of the snapshot(s), please attach a screenshot of the datastore browser window, showing all files of this virtual machine (full names, sizes, time/date) and attach the latest vmware.log file as well as the vmsd and vmx file.

Btw. how much free disk space do you currently have on the datastore?

André

[Amrando]

Hi Andre-

total free space available on the server according to the VI client browser is 80Gb, less than the size of the file being copied.  Here's the screenshot of the datastore browser on the guest in question.  The VI client shows no manual snapshots, and previous fixes suggested on searching was to create/delete a manual snapshot (no go) and try the 'remove snapshots' function from the service console (also no go - Virtual machine has no snapshots)..

[a_p_]

Running out of disk space seems to have caused a serious issue and I think you should immediately open a call with VMware for this!

It looks like the "EDMSERVER02-000002-delta.vmdk" file has been deleted/lost. In addition to the lost file, the last vRanger backup was not successful.

I'm afraid the only option (besides VMware Support) you have is to find out what can be recovered from vRanger.

André

from the log file:

Jul 17 07:04:16.891: vmx| DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/4741974d-7757e7e0-3594-001cc4a80a60/EDMSERVER02/EDMSERVER02-000002-delta.vmdk" : failed to open (25): Backing file doesn't exist. Type 8

Jul 17 07:04:19.088: vmx| DICT                annotation = [vRanger Backup: Type [Full], Result [Error], Time [7/16/2011 18:02:24 ]...