Dear Guys,
I found these files inside the disk are very Big, can I delete sesparse.vmdk directly?
If the system(VM) still work after delete these files,I hope everyone can provide an effective solution to delete these files, Many thanks!
No you cannot directly delete these files if you wish for your virtual machine to continue working
The sparse file is part of a snapshot it appears that you have had two on this particular machine for a significant amount of time. this is bad practice as you have already found they grow large very quickly.
the only way to safely get rid of this is to commit the snapshot (I am assuming that you want to keep the data that is in the files)
Thank you very much for your reply!
According to your statement,If I delete the files is a huge risk to me.
I think I can rename these files if VM is closed. When I find that VM can resume running, I think these files can be deleted. Many thanks!
Hi,
You shouldn't manually interfere here. As the other person said, commit the snapshots. By consolidation or deleting all snapshots.
Be aware, since you have 2 snapshots, the commit MAY take more time hence I would recommend doing commit in off-business hours since the VM may go un-reachable during this process.
If you have more queries, let me know.
You can refer one similar thread here:
what is sesparse.vmdk? what happens if I delete them?
I think I can rename these files if VM is closed. When I find that VM can resume running, I think these files can be deleted. Many thanks!
No!
Deleting, or renaming .vmdk files will result in either data loss, or at least a non-working VM.
Please post the output of ls -lisa from the VM's directory on the datastore, and let us know how much free disk space you currently have on the datastore. This is necessary to recommend steps a possible solution.
André
As Andre and I have already stated DO NOT MESS with your file systems. as Andre stated post the output of ls - lisa to enable us to advise on how to move forward. You will need a little more space in your datastore than the size of your original disk to commit a single snapshot, you have two I am not sure of the size of your original disk, but you will need the size of the original disk plus the size of your two snapshots and the rest of your machine in available space in your data store.
if that is not available then there are other options. but first show the output of that command please.
This depends on how the file is created and if existing entry of snapshot still remains.
You can check and consolidate any outstanding snapshots and then perform storage vmotion to other datastore. If files do not follow then these files are more likely leftover of your previous backup or snapshot.
Sometime these files are tiny chunks and left over by backup that never been consolidated properly.