Deleting snapshots caused a system error, unable to boot VM

[jktz83]

Hey there,

I ran into a big problem that I can't solve myself.

I'm using ESXi 6.7 U3 and I have a Windows Server VM that uses a thin provisioning disk. The theoretical maximum size of the disk is bigger than the datastore storage.
Today I wanted to delete all the snapshots of the VM, but during that process my ESXi crashed. After a reboot I was unable to start the VM and the storage of the datastore is full. The 'base'  thin vmdk file has grown and takes up all the space.
When I check the options of my VM, it still wants to boot from a snapshot vmdk, even though nothing shows up if I click on 'manage snapshots'.

How do I proceed from here? Does the base vmdk file contain all data? Am I able to delete all the snapshot .vdmk files manually to free up some space and boot up the VM? How do I decrease the storage space of the .vmdk file (it went up by like 300%).

Thank you

[IRIX201110141]

"Deleting" snaps can consume resources if they contains data/blocks which not existing or already allocated in the base. So during the copy back the base disks starts growing.

• Move other VMs away from that datastore to free up more space. If you set memory rerveration to 100% and stop/start a VM it will start without a swap file which can free up some GB depending on the number or vMem size of the VM(s)
• Add anothoer Datastore from NFS/iSCSI to the esxi so that you are able to clone the effected VMDK
• Create a Backup of the VM with Veeam or another free product(but the all need a licensed ESXi)

Send us a "ls -alhs" from the effected VM folder, a "df -h" and a "grep vmdk *.vmx" from the VMfolder.

DONT DELETE MANUALLY A SNAPSHOT FILE!