Delete old .vmdk files

[mahsa_rkh]

Hi. I have an old VM that has been working since 2012. recently I faced the error "there is no more space for virtual disk..." When I check the data store I realize that there are 3 .vmdk files that are stored automatically in 3 different years (2013,2015,2022) and the volume of each of them is about 2 TB. I want to know if I can delete 1 or 2 of them or not. If "yes" which one should I keep? the oldest or the last one? please help me!!!

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

To find out whether the files are obsolete, or snapshots, please provide some details, like a file listing that shows the files. time stamps, and sizes. A screenshot will help as to take a first look at this.

André

[mahsa_rkh]

Hi

Below is the screenshot. As you can see, there are 3 .vmdk files in my datastore.

[AnaghB]

Hello,

I checked the screenshot and see that the VM is running on 2 Snapshots. The 000001.vmdk and 000002.vmdk files are the pointer files of the snapshot. This is consuming the space on the Datastore as you can see that the size of the snapshot disk is huge. The solution here would be to consolidate the snapshot so that all the data is merged in 1 single disk and the usage on Datastore goes down. The action of snapshot consolidation can be achieved online but it will require some amount of free space. So migrate any other VM off this datastore and post that initiate the consolidation.

P.S - Please do NOT delete any files as it may lead to Data Loss.

Let me know the results.

[a_p_]

I'm afraid that there's more to do than just consolidating the snapshots.
Since the VM's virtual disk is thin provisioned, deleting/consolidating the 2 snapshots will require ~1.8TB free disk space on the datastore.

Do you have an option to add another ~2TB datastore that could be used to clone the VM?

André

[AnaghB]

Hello Andre,

Yes additional space will be required hence we can either increase the datastore capacity OR migrate other VMs to different datastore until the consolidation task is completed. 

[LisandrodeCuba]

Hi,

I also see no other solution but consolidating the snapshot. I would definitely make sure that there’s enough disk space for the consolidation to complete successfully. At least 2TB free on the data store. Good luck.