topic Re: Migrating VM with snapshots in VMware vCenter™ Discussions

Migrating VM with snapshots

BrianP805 — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 05:50:20 GMT

Running VCSA 7.0.3 on ESXi 6.7 host
A VM has multiple snapshots and not enough space on the datastore to delete/consolidate them so I thought to migrate the VM to another ESXi 6.7 host. Is this a good solution? If so, do the snapshots get consolidated during the migration?

Thank you

Re: Migrating VM with snapshots

maksym007 — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 15:58:01 GMT

No, the consolidation option will stay with you. Do you have another Datastore maybe?

Migration to another Datastore will be a good solution. Which type of Datastore do you have? NFS or VMFS? which version? NFS3 or VMFS6? Reclamation option might be helpful.

Re: Migrating VM with snapshots

BrianP805 — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 17:19:28 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping migration would also consolidate the snapshots. Any idea on how to proceed?
Here is all the info about current setup:

Host 2:
Windows VM2 - 2 VD's:
VD1 boot disk - 120GB thin using 35GB
VD2 data disk - 4TB thin using 2.4TB with 2.8TB of snapshot files
datastore1 VMFS6 (350GB) - VM2 VD1 boot disk and swap files - 300GB free
datastore2 VMFS6 (4.2TB) - VM2 VD2 data disk and snapshot files - 0GB free

Host 1:
Windows VM1 - 2 VD's:
VD1 boot disk - 120GB thin using 35GB
VD2 data disk - 1TB thin using 3.5TB with no snapshots files
datastore1 VMFS6 (350GB) - VM1 VD1 boot disk and swap files - 300GB free
datastore2 VMFS6 (16.5TB) - VM1 VD2 data disk - 13TB free

Goal is to get VM2 running on Host 2 with no snapshots. Problem is consolidation does not work due to no space on datastore2 of host2

Re: Migrating VM with snapshots

maksym007 — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:15:45 GMT

Try the following - create one more snapshot and after that choose the option - > Delete All.

The second option try to consolidate a powered-off VM.

But to be honest - now I am only guessing. I have an enterprise environment where more than 30 Datastores.

Never had such a problem before.

Re: Migrating VM with snapshots

maksym007 — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:18:18 GMT

Are you managing Storage side also? Check if your Netapp or QNAP or whatever has still enough space to extend the volume.

Maybe you or they "storage team" will find something for you. Maybe old backup is not needed anymore.

Anyway, good luck with this.

Re: Migrating VM with snapshots

Sam0054 — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 03:03:35 GMT

@BrianP805

How many datastore you have besides the two hosts specified?

If you have another datastore with free space roughly at 3TB, then, try storage vMotion to VM with containing more snapshots to that datastore and point it to host 2.

Otherwise, I don't understand why you have multiple snapshots on a single VM as snapshot is not a good backup option.