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ObjectifDubai
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Orphan Files

Hello,

I come to you hoping to have better luck than with VMWare support.

Do you know why sometimes in some cases VMWare does not delete old SNAPSHOT files after disk consolidation?

We migrated our vms a few months ago, from datastore in VMFS 5 to VMFS 6, but since then we very regularly have orphan files.

This anomaly occurs on vms with a snapshot. The steps leading to these orphan files are as follows:

  1. The backup application (NetBackup) makes a snapshot creation request to the vCenter for a vm
  2. vm backup completes successfully
  3.  Then the snapshots are deleted but the consolidation of the disks ends in error
  4. During the following consolidation, the operation ends correctly but we note that all the snapshot files are not deleted.

 

For example, we find for the vm below files orphaned for 4 days : 

 

Name Folder Size CapacityKB Modification Owner Thin Extents DiskType
---- ------ ---- ---------- ------------ ----- ---- ------- --------
MYVM-01-000007.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000007.vmdk 24117248 115343360 04/08/2022 22:20:41 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000007-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01-000006.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000006.vmdk 24117248 115343360 03/08/2022 22:12:11 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000006-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01_1-000007.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000007.vmdk 24117248 104857600 04/08/2022 22:20:41 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000007-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01-000005.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000005.vmdk 24117248 115343360 02/08/2022 22:11:57 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000005-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01_1-000006.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000006.vmdk 24117248 104857600 03/08/2022 22:12:11 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000006-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01_1-000005.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000005.vmdk 24117248 104857600 02/08/2022 22:11:57 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000005-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01_1-000004.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000004.vmdk 24117248 104857600 01/08/2022 22:20:47 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01_1-000004-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo
MYVM-01-000004.vmdk [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000004.vmdk 24117248 115343360 01/08/2022 22:20:47 root True [MYDATASTORE-014] MYVM-01/MYVM-01-000004-sesparse.vmdk VirtualDiskSeSparseBackingInfo

 

Does anyone have any clues or an explanation, thank you in advance

 

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3 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Are you sure that the files are not in use? That would be quite unusual.
Even though the Snapshot Manager doesn't show any snapshots, there may be some!
Backup applications sometimes do not completely release the .vmdk files after the backup, which causes the snapshot deletion/consolidation to fail.

One option to ensure that the VM doesn't have active snapshots is the check the .vmdk file names in the VM's virtual disk settings.

How does your backup application do the backups? Does it use the API, or does it Hot-Add the VMs' virtual disk files to the backup server, or a backup proxy?

André

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ObjectifDubai
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,


Thank you for your reply,

 

On the Backup Application side, NetBackup only launches commands via the APIs to create and delete snapshots.

On the file side, yes these are indeed orphan files, this has been checked with VMWare support.

For my part, I regularly list them in Powercli with the "Get-VmwOrphan" function of lucD.

To delete these files I take my precautions, I perform a Storage vMotion of the vm and I delete all the files that have not migrated.

I insisted with the support for 1 month and I just learned that they escalated our ticket.......

a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

>>> On the Backup Application side, NetBackup only launches commands via the APIs to create and delete snapshots.

Does NetBackup contain details about the reason for the failed deletion/consolidation in its log files, e.g. something like "Unable to access file xxx since it is locked"?

André

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