No snapshot in Snapshot Manager but have growing delta-file

[PatricNIX]

Hi,

Today I ran out of space on my vSphere 5 host but I couldn't figure out why at first because I had the drive in Thick Provisioning and it was just half-full.

I started to look around and couldn't find anything that took up all the space so I used SSH to get in to the host. There I found out that one of my machines had a delta-file what was about 180GB big.. Yet I couldn't see any snapshots in Snapshot Manager so I started to look for answers. I found out that at the time the original flat.vmdk-file stopped being updated was the same day I tried Acronis vmProtect 7 for the first time, it failed by the way if that has to do with anything.

So the original flat-file is 650GB Thick Provisioned and then there's a delta-file at 180GB, I had recently put in a 2TB drive so right now I'm copying all the files to that datastore so I will be able to boot the machine up at least.

Now comes the hard part. How do I "merge" the delta file to the original .vmdk-file without loosing any data? As I mentioned I can't see it in the Snapshot Manager so I guess I'll have to do it via SSH, but how?

Thanks,

[a_p_]

This unfortunately is a often seen issue with backup applications. They often don't update the Snapshot Manager (.vmsd file) properly and you end up with an active, growing snapshot in case something goes wrong with a backup. With the thick provisioned virtual disk you may create a new snapshot and then use the "Delete All" function to consolidate all snapshots. Please ensure there are no other VM's with active snapshots which might fill up the datastore while deleting the snapshot. A great too to get an overview is RVTools (http://www.robware.net/)

André

[PatricNIX]

So if I take a snapshot and delete it, it will recognize that I already have a snapshot that isn't in the snapshot manager?

Great reply, I will try this as soon as the move to the other datastore is complete!

[a_p_]

So if I take a snapshot and delete it, it will recognize that I already have a snapshot that isn't in the snapshot manager?

Yes, but make sure you use the "Delete All" button! The reason why you need to create an additional snapshot is just to enable the "Delete All" button.

André

[aralestrip]

I ran into the same issue while testing the DataRecovery (but not the latest version).

It was really helpful to have the email alerts about snapshots turned on, and to have a 2GB or more big file that you delete when're really out of space to make the system breath again and give you a chance to save the situation easily.