Snapshot Problems causing major trauma

[BRFC1875]

My mail server crashed recently and I couldn't restore the backup as there are more than 5 partitions and the restore kept failing. In order to bring it back I had to use the flat files from a snapshot restore. I used the VMWare converter v 40 with the flat files from the restoe and it worked.

It has been back up for a little while and has seemed quite happy but I couldn't run any snapshots on it. i found an article telling me to rename vnsn and vmsx files as old - which I did and I then got the option up to take e snap shot. To test it I ran a snapshot for about a minute and then tried to delete it. Three hours later it failed with insufficient disk space. The plan was simply to get the snapshot working then remove the 160Gb partition from the VM settings and then delete it. This would free up space within my datastore fo rthe future

I now have a consolidated helper -0 snapshot and only 7.8 Gb of disk space. It looks like there are loads of snapshot files that have still been running but I don't know how.

Is the best way of digging myself out of this mess to clone the server to a new datastore. I have a

DISK 1 - 24Gb C partition

DISK 2 - 10Gb App

DISK 3 - 160Gb Data partition ready to be removed

DISK 4 - 30Gb Log Partition

DISK 5 - 100Gb Recovery Partition

DISK 6 - 350Gb Data Partition (RDM attached to the SAN) (Was a 160Gb virtual disk that I still have attached but no longer need)

I am now stuck with a full 500 Gb Datastore. There are a couple of disks that have the 00004 and 000005 prefixs but there were no snapshots running before I ran this one.

Can anyone please help me sort this out.I have read that a cold clone into a new datastore would consolidate but I really think I should get rid of this consolidate helper- 0 first - if this is the way forward.

I have attached a screenshot of the datastore files

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Do I understand this correctly?

Disk3 (testex2k7a_2.vmdk) as well as Disk6 (testex2k7a_5.vmdk) can be deleted?

In this case I would prepare the OS for the removal of the disks, shut down the VM and remove the disks from the VM (make note of the associated vmdk names). After verifying the VM runs without issues with the 2 virtual disks removed, you may delete the corresponding vmdk files from the datastore, which should free up a lot of disk space. Then - using the snapshot manager - delete the existing Snapshot (Consolidate Helper)

Before you do anything, I'd like to double check this. Please attach your latest vmware.log file as well as the testex2k7a.vmx file to your next post.

Some comments to what you wrote:

To test it I ran a snapshot for about a minute and then tried to delete it. Three hours later it failed with insufficient disk space...

Disk6 (testex2k7a_5*.vmdk) looks strange to me. The base vmdk is smaller than the snapshots, which looks like a thin provisioned disk. However thin provisioning was introduced in v4.0 and you also mentioned Disk6 is an RDM disk!?

I further assume you created a new snapshot and selected "Delete All" in the snapshot manager. This, in combination with Disk6, was most likely the reason why you ran out of disk space.

André

[BRFC1875]

Is pretty much exactly what I did. It was a little confusing as disk 6 was actually disk 5 in the datastore and was a VDM. I removed the 160 and 100 Gb partitions from Windows. Then removed the partitions from the VM by Editing the Hardware Settings, once the free space was there deleted the Consolidated Helper snapshot.

I spoke with VM support today who were really good,and helpful, they pointed me in the right direction. All the snapshot files have been committed (took over 5 hours) but all now looks good.

Really need to look at backup software, as it looks like this is how it occurred by running background snapshots which were not obvious through the VC.

Thanks again Andre for your reply