This thread: Re: Clean a VSAN Datastore, talks about using /usr/lib/vmware/osfs/bin/objtool to delete objects from a vSAN datastore. How do I determine which objects make up a VMDK?
Full story, we have a third party replication software. During a particular operation it's supposed to move VMDKs around. Sometimes this fails and leaves the originating VMDK. So at this point, it's just a file sitting on the datastore and not associated with any VM. How do I go about deleting those files? I guess it could be asked about any file on the datastore. Let's day I stored some ISO files, how would you delete those.
I don't think that opening up the datastore browser, right click delete, is the correct route. This is vSAN 6.
Thank you, Zach.
VMware support advised me to simply right click... delete through the datastore and that it's fine for the meta data to remain. I did this, however no free space was re-claimed. Any ideas? I'll update as the case progresses. Thank you, Zach.
I do the following in such cases: I rename the file (or directory where the stale files are in) to <name>.delete
If that works, the file or folder, the file(s) were not locked and it's safe to delete them.
I never had a situation where the space was not reclaimed.
Just so I understand. On a vSAN datastore you would rename a file (making sure it was not in use) and the a right click... delete would remove the file and you would see that reflected in the free space available? Thank you, Zach.
After a bit of time passed the free space was reclaimed. Thank you, Zach.