Old Snapshot delta's not showing in Snapshot manager

[th84]

Hi,

I have a few VM's with old snapshot delta's that do not show in the snapshot manager.

I have followed the instructions provided by this KB: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100231...

Towards the bottom it says

"When the commit has completed successfully, there are no -00000X.vmdk or -00000X-delta.vmdk files left unless they were not part of the snapshot tree. These files can be deleted. To confirm that the commit succeeded, view the .vmx file, and verify that virtual disks are now pointing to a base disk (-flat.vmdk )."

The VM's that I have are still showing delta files. These delta's appear to have very old date stamps when compared to the rest of the files contained within the directory of the VM.

I have verified that the .vmx file is pointing to the base disk. I did this by checking the vmdk file that is reference by the attribute "..filename =".

So from everything in this KB it looks to me that it is safe to delete the "orphaned" delta's.

However, I just wanted to check to see if there are any additional checks that I should be doing before deleting the orphaned delta's that maybe this KB doesn't mention?

Or perhaps I have missed an important step! I am still learning VMWare so I don't know all the tricks yet.

Thank you,

Cheers

[balarajugopinat · Accepted solution]

please check this KB

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100504...

[th84]

Thank you for that link.

Is there a special way that we should be removing the delta's? Or just a regular 'rm' will suffice?

[kumarsenthild]

"rm" is sufficed.

Better if you have enough space of available on other datastore , Just clone the VM and it will give you current state of VM without any snapshot . So you can safely delete the old VM with full of confident.

[th84]

I tried the clone and you are right it worked.

I did notice that the name of the vmdk files are quite a bit different. They now have "*-00000X.vmdk, *-00000X-flat.vmdk, *-00000X-ctk.vmdk" in the name.

This must be as a result of the cloning process?

Unfortunately, I don't know if cloning is the best option because it will require us re-create the backups for this machine.

I followed the the second KB link that was posted and I cannot find any reference in any of the vmx files that would indicate any of them are pointing to any of the left over delta's.

However, I am still hesitant to delete these delta files.

[th84]

After reading over both KB's and performing all of the recommended steps, it turns out that we no longer needed the server in question.

So as an experiment, before completely deleting the server, I decided to remove the delta files that were still showing in the VM's directory.

I shut the server down and removed the delta file and it's associated files.

I then booted the server up and the server successfully booted without any issue.

It was a good exercise and hopefully with this experience I'll be a little more confident in the future.