Can't remove snapshots

[Gringodude]

Greetings,

I've read alot of info on this issue and, of the solutions I feel comfortable trying, none seem to work.

Issue: I have 5 VM's all about 70gigs in size. They are all stored on a 650gig volume on my SANs and managed with my ESX(3.5) server. Due to inexperience I allowed my snapshots to grow in number to a point that I could no longer start any of the machines

(Error: Could not power on VM: No space left on device. Failed to power on VM).

It was then that I realized that my SANs volume had grown to large. I managed to successfully delete/remove all backups from 3 of the 5 machines. On 2 of them I tried "delete all"..that created a consolidated-helper file. No change in available space on SANs and all of these massive .vmdk files are still there. Next I read/try to create another snapshot and then "delete all" again. This process takes about 2-3 hours and then indicates complete with no indication of errors. However I am continually losing more space on my SANs volume (only 11MB left and still can't start machines) and the vmdks for those two machines are still there.

How can I get rid of those snapshots?

Thanks

[RvdNieuwendijk]

If you are running a VMware vSphere version before 4.0 U2 you should not delete all snapshots at once. You should start to remove the oldest snapshot. If that is finished you can remove the snapshot that is the oldest at that moment. And so on. See: Changes to Snapshot mechanism “Delete All” for more information.

Regards, Robert

[a2alpha]

Do you have space on the SAN to create and present another LUN to your esx server. If so, you could storage vMotion one of the virtual machines off to another datastore to free up some space to power on and remove the snapshots one by one on your remaining machines.

[Gringodude]

Well I tried taking the advice of one of our domain admins and, long story short, I'll have to rebuild both machines from production. Oh well...the tough lessons are the ones least forgotten.

I guess all -00000000.vmdk files are interdependant on each other. Deleted, what I thought was an older vmdk but the current one depends on it to start the machine. =(

Thanks anyway gents.

[a_p_]

Seems it is to late now to help.

However, if you are interested in how snapshots work, and how the "Delete All" process worked prior to ESX 4.0 U2, take a look at Troubleshooting Virtual Machine snapshot problems

André

[a2alpha]

Sorry couldn't help, good luck with the rebuild!