Disks always need to be consolidated, why?

[71rellimcm39]

Running a RHEL6 server with vCenter 6.0.  Seems like weekly that the disks need to be consolidated.  Today I come into the office and the disks need to be consolidated and the VM was powered off.  I didn't power it off, nor anyone else.  I had to migrate from an ESXi server to another and then back to the original ESXi server in order to consolidate disks. 

Our VMWare Admin comes from a Windows background, so isn't sure why, however I want to ask why do I have to keep doing this?  I'm not creating snapshots alot for this VM.  Once awhile we migrate from one ESXi host to another, however I'm trying to figure out what the underlying reason for this and if there is something we can do to fix this.

thanks

[a_p_]

Discussion moved from Forums to VMware ESXi

[vijayrana968]

Is there any backup scheduled for this VM? When you go to task and events column for this VM, check events just before consolidation warning events whats going with this VM.

[71rellimcm39]

Yes we are doing backups, however its thru a 3rd party vendor CommVault, no backups thru vCenter.

There is only 1 disk for this VM and its around 125 GB, so not alot of space being taken up.

[71rellimcm39]

Also checked from vCenter:  Tasks & Events

Looked thru the view of the errors and this is what it shows:

Unable to access file since it is locked

See the error stack for details on the cause of this problem

Error Stack shows

An error occurred while consolidating disks:  msg.fleio.lock.

Consolidation failed for disk node 'scsi0:0': msgf.leio.lock.

[vijayrana968]

This is happening because vmdk is locked by one of the host. follow troubleshooting steps

Troubleshooting issues resulting from locked virtual disks (2107795) | VMware KB

[dekoshal]

When you see disk consolidation warning verify if Virtual machine is having delta (snapshot) file in the working directory of the virtual machine.

Disk consolidation massage appears when remove snapshot task is received but the task could not compete.

If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider the use of the Correct or Helpful to award points.

Best Regards,

Deepak Koshal

CNE|CLA|CWMA|VCP4|VCP5|CCAH