snapshots::REDO out of disk space:: Ouch

[ronald_higgins]

Greetings Fellow vmware users,

I've gotten myself into a tricky situation and was wondering if you have encountered this issue before and how you got around it.

We built a VM (200GB) and created a snapshot of the server. We then preceeded to export a db to the virtual and as we

found out a few hours later, these changes were written to REDO, and subsequently the ESX disk ran full.

A bit of googling revealed this was due to the snapshot taken previously.

I removed the snaphost via the snapshot manager, it took a while but it completed without throwing out errors.

After it completed the Virtual Guest went into a funny state, it was marked (invalid) next to the guest name.

"service mgmt-vmware restart" at least allowed me to start up the VM, but if I power down or suspend the Virtual Guest goes back

into an (invalid) state, and another "service mgmt-vmware restart" is required.

But that's not the problem though, my problem is that the snapshot still seems to exist on the disk clogging up an additional 200GB.

Below is what is is the guest directory.

-rw------- 1 root root 200G Aug 25 07:56 myvirtual-flat.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 408 Aug 25 09:06 myvirtual.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 408 Aug 26 18:59 myvirtual_2.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 410 Aug 26 18:59 myvirtual_1.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 25G Aug 26 20:07 myvirtual_2-flat.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 210G Aug 27 08:04 myvirtual_1-flat.vmdk

I'm guessing that all new changes are being written to myvirtual_1-flat.vmdk & myvirtual_2-flat.vmdk as the dates are

newer, but what to do with myvirtual-flat.vmdk ??

Regards

Ronald

[depping]

I don't know if you can create an extra datastore, or have another datastore with enough diskspace. easiest thing to do is clone the vm and delete the old one. this way you will get wrid of the snapshots.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[ronald_higgins]

Awesome stuff.

Thanks Duncan, i'll try and free up space on our other ESX and clone. Will post results for future searches on the topic.

PS. Your blog has been very helpful to us in the past, awesome stuff, keep it up

[robert_jensen]

If you arent able to get enough free space, then use Vmware converter, to export the machine away from the ESX.

Then delete the old VM, and and use ocnverter to get it back again.

This should also be a way to do it.

/Robert

[ronald_higgins]

Thanks for your help Duncan and Robert.

The clone to another server and then clone back did the trick.

Much appreciated

regards

ronald