.snapshot folders

[Wimo]

I need to take back some of the NFS storage from the ESX hosts we are using for View. I edited the pools to point all to a couple of datastores, then did a Rebalance. Everything apparently moved where I wanted it.

But - there is still, in most of the datastores, a folder structure that starts .snapshots, with subfolders like hourly.0, etc., nightly.0, etc. Some are empty, some have more subfolders for some of the VMs, including replica and source. These have .vmx, .vmdk, .nvram, .vmsd, .vmsn files. What are these, why are they still there, and what can I do with them?

[admin]

Can you see the vm's / replicas in the vCenter?

Are they linked to the old folders?

Blog: http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/dommermuth

[Wimo]

None of the VMs (which are linked clones, forgot to mention) have any snapshots. These .snapshot directories are all hidden, although they are visible from the datastore browser (but from Service Console, need to do ls -a). And, I am not able to delete anything in any of these directories, or at least not with VMs powered on.

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Hello.

But - there is still, in most of the datastores, a folder structure that starts .snapshots, with subfolders like hourly.0, etc., nightly.0, etc.

This sounds like the scheduled snapshot feature on NetApp. If you go into the NetApp FilerView management application, you can browse Volumes -> Snapshots to see what is there. By default, scheduled snaps are turned on and named things like hourly.1 and nightly.1, etc. You can also delete the snapshots and turn off the scheduled snapshots in the FilerView as well, if you do not need this functionality.

Good Luck!

[Wimo]

Ooh - I'll bet that's it. Just sent an email to the storage team. Points may await you after their reply...

[CWedge]

ya the .snapshots folder is for Netapp filer snapshots.

If they do backups with this method, then you cannot delete it.

[Wimo]

Yep, that was it. Thanks guys!