snapshot and consolidation issue in vshpere 5.5

[yanivga]

HI All, (this is my first time writing in the forum)

i have a vsphere 5.5 environment and i have one vm that had one snapshot for 2 months

we decided to finally delete the snapshot and he got stuck on 99% i check on the internet and i saw that you need to check if the file size of the

delta,flat,sesparse change and it's didn't for a long time (we have 2 vmdk hard-drive no raw mapping)

so i understand that the task got stuck so i restart the vpxa service (even restart the entire esxi) and i remove the VM from the inventory and add it back to a VM with no snapshots and with an error saying that consolidation is needed so i strat the consolidation and again i check to see if the file size are changing and they are not they are the same size exactly when the snapshot stooped working even the time stamp on the file is 5 hours ago

right now the VM is powered off

any help or referring to the right path will give you a sure spot in heaven

Thank You

[rcporto]

How big is that virtual machine (and the delta file)? Another option is just clone that virtual machine, that will create a new virtual machine without snapshot, power on the new cloned virtual machine, if everything is OK, you can just delete the old virtual machine.

And if you can afford some downtime, delete the snapshot with the virtual machine powered off will be more faster than with the virtual machine powered on.

A final tip is, avoid to run virtual machines from snapshots for more than 24-72 hours... this is what VMware recommends: Best practices for using snapshots in the vSphere environment (1025279) | VMware KB

[Xlord]

yanivgaYanivga,

My input and suggestion below for your operation,

1) Create an "(a) new snapshot" from existing offline VM guest.

2) Start revert your VM from (b)previous snapshot state.

3) Shutdown your VM from (b) previous snapshot state

4) Goto snapshot manager --> consolidate

5) Revert your VM from the "(a)new snapshot" and start it to verify if it is ok.

PS: you should see the (b) previous snapshot should be consolidated and only (a) new snapshot is available.

Hope that helps.

Xlord