Can Not remove Snapshot

[KGoch]

In an earlier thread i mentioned having issues with Storage vMotion (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/214222), and checking for snapshots was suggested. One of my VMs had a Snapshot so I went to delete with the Snapshot Manager in the VIC. However the operation never completed and showed the error message "Operation timed out" after being stuck at 95% for a few minutes. I tried to delete the snapshot again because it was still showing up int he Snapshot Manager. Now when I try to delete ir I get this message: "The request refers to an objexct that no longer exists or has never existed."

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[COdlk]

Try restarting hostd

service mgmt-vmware restart

After this try creating a snapshot and then remove it.

david

[KGoch]

Im guessing thats safe to run while the environment is live, and Im guessing to run it on the host the VM currently lives on?

[aldikan · Accepted solution]

Hi,

When you deleting the snapshot, you are actually "commiting the changes", this could be a pretty long process, depends on the how much changes were there.

Virtual Center will give you "Operation timeout" error after 15 minutes by "default".

This does not mean that operation will not finish. Just give it time, sometimes it takes hours to complete.

Search this board for snapshot deletion and there are a lot of us who encountered this, me included.

It will complete eventually and you will not see snapshot in the snapshot manager, files related to the snapshot will be cleared in the VM folder also

++++Please rate all helpful posts+++++

Alex

[Troy_Clavell]

there is a default timeout in vCenter, but that does not mean your snapshot is not being deleted. Depending on how big the snapshot was, it may take awhile for ESX to complete the removal. Just keep checking your snapshot manager, once it's empty you will no the snapshot has been deleted.

[LarsLiljeroth]

Hi

I see this alot. And as Troy mention this is usually because of the timeout in vCenter. If you take a look at the datastore

you can see if the delta files are still there. The Snapshop deletion is still running. Have patience.


Best regards

Lars Liljeroth

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[Lightbulb]

In the future you might want to remove snapshots from the cli

vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/datastore/VM/VM.vmx removesnapshots

To view the ongoing status of a snapshot Delet/commit you can use the following command after changing directory (cd) to the VM directory where the delta files are located:

*watch "ls -Ghtu --full-time .vmdk"

See "Command to monitor snapshot deletion"

[KGoch]

Thanks for the responses!

Seems the problem was that the delta .vmdks were rather large (150GB) since this VM has a large (250GB) vmdk normally. So im guessing its just churning through deleting the delta vmdks.

Thanks!

[petedr]

What the others have posted is what I have seen as well.

Just curious though how long the snapshot has been on the VM, a 150GB snapshot out of 250GB is quite large.

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

[KGoch]

Well the snapshot no longer shows up in Snapshot Manager, but the snapshot file and the associated VMDKs are still there.

The snapshot is so large because the data on the VMs secondary disk(250GB) changes almost entirely every 24 hours, so every 48 hours the entire 250GB is deleted and completed re-written

[KGoch]

Still cant get the snapshot to go away. The snapshot was created by esXpress for backups, but it still hasnt gone away. Oddly enough now, esXpress wont back up that VM saying the .vmsd does not match.

But the VM is up and running just fine.

[aldikan]

Hi KGoch,

I am not familiar twith esXpress,

If snapshot was created with esXpress, then esXpress should be used to remove it, just a guess?

Again, I don't use it, not sure how it works,

On Virtual Center side, I would suggest to create another snapshot, and use "Delete All" after. This possibly would delete your old files also,

Try that,

Let us know how it goes,

Alex

[KGoch]

Well that kind of worked. All the actual snapshots themselves are gone from the datastore folder, but the snapshot VMDKs are still there.

These files are left and I believe they are/were realted to the snapshot:

-vmname_1-000001.vmdk

-vmname_1-000002.vmdk

-vmname-000002-delta.vmdk

The normal VMDKs theat the host uses are called:

-vmname.vmdk

-vmname_1.vmdk

So it seems like there sometime of extra files relating to the VMs second VMDK that are sticking around.

[petedr]

When I posted before I didn't realize the snapshot issue came from esXpress backups. One point though esXpress just uses normal Vmware commands to add and delete snapshots. If that process fails it usually is a problem on the Vmware side.

Did you contact our support group when this issue first started. At this point though since you have tried a number of things to delete the snapshot you may need Vmware support to assist.

When snapshot mismatches occur the normal fix is add a new snapshot ( uncheck the save memory box ) and then delete all snapshots.

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress