VM wants disk consolidation, but no snapshots are listed in the Snapshot Manager

[bonne123]

After a failed replication with VEEAM, I get this on one of my VM's:

"Configuration issues.

Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed."

without having any snapshots indicated in the Snapshot Manager.

The name of the disk listed under "edit settings" does indicate, that the disk is a snapshot though.

How to fix this correctly?

Regards, Lars.

[rcporto]

The workaround is take a new snapshot and then "Delete All" using the Snapshot Manager.

VMware KB: Committing snapshots when there are no snapshot entries in the Snapshot Manager

[marcelo_soares]

This is the "Consolidatio needed" alarm funcion - tell you when there is a snapshot but it is not listed on the Snap Manager. You can safely consolidate the snapshots, it will try to delete all without touching the actual state of your VM.

[bonne123]

Thank you for your reply both of you.

I am a bit confued about what the safest approach will be.

Should I:

1) take another new snapshot (this will then be the third snapshot, as disk name is indicated as xxxx00002.vmdk and then delete them all?

or

2) simply just hit the "consolidate" option?

What would be the safest option, and how safe is it consideres to be?

(and would it be safe to do while the VM is up and running?)

Regards, Lars.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Both option should work fine even while the VM is up and running. Depending on the snapshot sizes, deleting the them could take some time so please be patient.

André

PS: One more thought, If the base virtual disk is thin provisioned, make sure you do have sufficient free disk space on the datastore before you start deleting/consolidating!!!

[Ram8]

Hi,

Take a new snapshot and delete all.

Thanks.

[NavalgundRaj]

Hi Bonne,

  I faced similar issues many times in my prod environment.

1. I took test snapshot and tried consolidation---issue persists ( i.e. need consolidation).

2.I tried migrating to another host and tried took test snap shot and tried consolidation not worked--issue persists ( ie need consolidation).

3. I tried SVMotion to another datastore tried above----issue persists ( i.e. need consolidation).

( if you do not have multiple datastore, since usually test or dev will not have multiple datastore)

Finally i got the reason why snap shot was created due to back up software ( However there were no issues from backup software)

Finally.

I powered off the machine and cloned the machine.

However there is one more alternative way is V2V the machine.

Please let me know,if this was the answer, so that even can get to know more info, if there were different solutions.

Please reply.

Thanks.

Raj

Message was edited by: NavalgundRaj

[bonne123]

Think disk and lots of free space.

Hitting the "Consolidate option" simply solved the issue.

Thanks everyone.

Regards, Lars.

[bonne123]

Thanks - but actually Consolidation worked in my case.

Regards, Lars.

[adandaman]

I had a similar experience where warning appeared, I kept doing consolidation and nothing would happen, it completed almost instantly.  That happened even after deleting the snapshots.  Then I noticed there were a lot of VMDK's.  

It was a problem because I couldn't clone the VM

What I discovered is that I had deleted the snapshots one by one.  Then I took the action "Delete All Snapshots" which took a while.  Then I did one more consolidation which took some time.  After that the problem was resolved.