VM Consolidation on production DB server

[Sagittarius1]

First of all, I already know I caused this problem by being dumb and not reading the documentation. Mea culpa.

I created multiple snapshots on a production DB server and never deleted them. As expected, they started to grow bigger and bigger and now I'm almost out of space on my datastore.

This virtual server size is 900gb, and it's used in a production environment, so taking it down for the few days it'll take to consolidate the snapshots is not possible.

To try to fix my own mess I have some plans in mind, based on my sparse knowledge of the problem and even sparser knowledge of proper ESXi administration:

PLAN A:

• Copy VM with snapshots files in 1st server to 2nd VMWare ESXi Server
• Consolidate in 2nd server
• Once finished, backup Databases and logins to NAS
• Delete VM with snapshots on 1st server
• Transfer consolidated VM from 2nd server to 1st server and mount
• Restore DB from backup in NAS

PLAN A.1:

• Consolidate on 1st server, mount VM copy in 2nd.
• When finished, backup 2nd DB and logins and restore them in 1st.

PLAN B:

• Backup DBs and Logins from VM in 1st server to NAS
• Delete VM from disk
• Create new VM and install the DBMS
• Restore DB from backup in NAS

The question is: can I get my datastore space back without making my users lose too many hours of service?

And from my two plans, which one would be better and less risky?

[williambishop]

Can you expand the vmfs, and given the additional room, remove some snapshots?

[Vijaynb]

Hi,

You have many option to resolve this:

1. Expand the VMFS of the current LUN and consolidate it

2. Create a new VMFS LUN and migrate the VM to it and then consolidate it

3. Create a new NFS data store and move the VM and consolidate it

Make sure you have enough disk space on the above conditions.

If these are not possible, use vmware converter and convert (V2V) the VM and configure it.

Regards,

Vijaynb