Abort removing snapshot or wait

[dennes]

Hi,

I have a VM that had a snapshot which i just deleted. This took a while and upon investigating i found out the snapshot delta file is 300GB (!!!!!) big. Since i only have about 200GB free on that LUN i'm afraid i will crap out at some point. It's been running for about an hour now, but there seems to be no disk or cpu activiry whatsoever. Also on the SC in don't see the file sizes of the delta en flat files change. From other threads i found out that commiting a snapshot this big can easily takes hours, but there's no indication anything is actually running.

Can i safely abort this, as it wll probably run out of space at some point anyway? What happens to my data?

Is there any way i can recover from this situation?

Thanks!

[avlieshout]

Commiting a snapshot of this size can take hours!!. But since you said you allready deleted it, just wait...and wait..and wait.

Do not try to abort this, cause you risk corrupting data.

If there is only 1 snapshot, don't worry about the free space on your datastore.

A snapshot can never grow bigger than the vmdk file it is originating from, because it will hold only the last change of disk block.

Your vmdk file will also stay the same size, because the blocks that are changed in the delta file will overwrite the blocks in the vmdk file.

-Arnim van Lieshout

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[dennes]

Well, i bit the bullet and did cancel the remove snapshots vmware-cmd, since the LUN was nearly out of space.

I wasn't able to start the VM, because the was not enough space for the redo file (eror on startup). After creating free space by moving another big VM to a different LUN, abouth three heart attacks later, i'm now able to start the VM, but it still leaves me with a 300GB delta file.

Is there a faster/safer/better way to get rid of this delta than committing it which would take about a day given it's size?

Dennes

[avlieshout · Accepted solution]

Hi Dennes,

I Suggest you use VMware Converter to convert this VM to another VM. After the cloning you can remove the old VM. This is faster and safer than committing the snapshot.

However you need some disk space to hold the clone of this VM.

-Arnim van Lieshout

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[dennes]

Thanks Arnim!

Suppose i now have enough space, can i just convert is with the live Converter 4.0 or should i use the bootable (previous) version? It's an SBS 2008 (x64) VM

Dennes

[dennes]

Nevermind. Just to be on the safe side i'll backup this VM with Shadowprotect to an external NAS and then restore that backup to a new VM.

Thanks,

Dennes