an error occurred while consolidating disks: 5 (input/output error)

[AdvNetSol]

Hello,

Recently had this error start occurring on a running VM.  I can complete a replication of it so I do have the option move it to a different VM and then back but thought I would see if anyone knows how to deal with this problem so I can learn.  The details I can offer are:

Disk has plenty of space, 368GB of 1.07TB.

ESX 5.5.0

RAID 5 with 3 hard drives on a Dell Perc 6 1GB controller...so IOPS are so so but decent enough for one exchange VM

I have tried rebooting my VM and Veeam server with no luck.  Created snapshot and delete all completes but doesn't allow me to consolidate files

There are 67 vmdk files built up from just a week time period because of the Veeam backup retries after a failure.  The Guest VM is using the highest numbered....vmname_1-0000067.vmdk

Any ideas on how to address this?

[Nithy07cs055]

Seems you have plenty of delta files created due to the backup ..

if i am not wrong the backup in your environment takes a snapshot based incremental backup .. if the disk size of VM is huge or the traffic to that vm is heavy we usually face this kind of issue ,.

i would suggest ,. these steps .

1. please verify the vm is fully backed up. since it is exchange and you ll have continues hits through smtp

2. make sure the all files and DB are backed up

3. stop the backup configured for the VM

4. check the snapshot manager .. and the disk names..

5. check if you have file locks

6. since u tried taking snapshot and consolidation fails .. log in to the console of esxi host which is hosting the vm

7. check for the id of the vm causing issue

8. try to consolidate those using command line

these below KB's should help you to fix the issue ..

Committing snapshots when there are no snapshot entries in the Snapshot Manager (1002310) | VMware K...

Snapshot Manager fails to detect snapshots of VMs (1026380) | VMware KB

Investigating virtual machine file locks on ESXi (10051) | VMware KB