Fusion and Host Disk Space

[rbenash]

Currently running Fusion on a Mac. I am not really running anything or saving files of any sort on the host machine just yet. I am getting notices from the VM that host disk is running out of space and that I need to free up at least 1.3 GB to get the VM out of pause state.

Looking at host disk I have 1.2+GB free out of 232 G drive. This message has come up in the past couple of months about 3 times. Both times I was able to eliminate enough files (mostly left over VM files that I was not going to use). About two weeks ago there was 34G of free space. I have added or saved nothing on the host, but still seem to be loosing space. I want to think it's the VM causing this.

I have 1.2+ G available on the host and can't eliminate anything else. As mentioned above not really using the host disk space to save an files nor have I been adding anything there. Is it possible that VM is causing this problem?

Any ideas would be helpful. My next step to get out of this is to image the host disk and load a bigger one. But I need to understand how I am bleeding host space.

[wila]

Hi,

You probably have auto-protect enabled on your virtual machine(s).

Autoprotect will take automatic snapshots of your Virtual Machine and that process can be very expensive on disk space.

Consider disabling that and/or limit the frequency and total amount of snapshots to keep.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[rbenash]

Thanks for the suggestions. I changed my auto protect to take a snapshot daily but only keep 1 last time this happened. At that time (about two weeks are so ago) I had 34G of host disk free space.

When I look at snapshots I do not see any listed. Just Current State: Running.

Saw the same thing last time as well. At that time auto protect was set to keep 5 snapshots I beleive. How do I really check to see if there are snapshots stored somewhwere and delete them? It seems that the GUI is lying to me.

On a further note - snapshots files are part of the allocated VM space, correct? So when the VM message is saying host disk is running out of free space, is it really saying the the allocated VM disk area is unable to grow out into it's allocated space? Just trying to get that relationship straight in my head

[admin]

How do I really check to see if there are snapshots stored somewhwere and delete them?

Check inside the virtual machine bundle (see ) to see if there are COW disks. However, do not delete them using the Finder - in some cases, the UI will not show snapshots but they're still in use (you should get error messages about not being able to clean up snapshots).

The size you chose for the virtual disk is not the same as the amount of space a virtual machine can occupy - if you have N snapshots with a disk of size S, the space required for virtual disks can be up to N * S (see http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/11/vmware-fusion-3.html )

The first order of business is to see where all your space is going - until you figure that out, everything else is just guesswork. You can do Get Infos in the Finder to find large files/folders, or you could use a graphical tool like Grand Perspective.

It's likely that what's happening is that because you're low on disk space, snapshot cleanup is failing. If this is the case, you'll need to free up enough space (potentially as much as you chose for the virtual disk) or move the virtual machine to a place where there is enough free space.

[rbenash]

Ok, so I'm back up on the VM now, but only because I installed the disk upgrade I was planning for the MB Pro. Can someone tell me where snapshot files are stored?

[rbenash]

Thanks - I have 60 G of free space now since upgrading the system HD. Hopefully I can figure out what's happening now before I loose that space as well.

[admin]

By default, snapshots are stored in the .vmwarevm virtual machine bundle (see ). However, you should really do a general search to find all big files instead of immediately zeroing in on the snapshots.

[rbenash]

Yes, there were only 2 snapshot files found. I don't see any COW disks. Assuming that the file name would make that obvious. The VM machine itself is the biggest at a whopping 155GB. Almost 4 times the size when initially loaded a couple months ago (mid March). The file of the VM after running standalone converter that was used to build this VM was 41G.

[rbenash]

When I show the package contents of the VM I actually see 4 different versions of the Sxxx .vmdk files. So there's 9 different versions of all of those files times 9 in the package, the most recent is today. I have no clue what that means or if any of those can be or should be deleted? Tried to print a listing but can figure out how to do that.

[WoodyZ]

When I show the package contents of the VM I actually see 4 different versions of the Sxxx .vmdk files. So there's 9 different versions of all of those files times 9 in the package, the most recent is today. I have no clue what that means or if any of those can be or should be deleted?

Those are the base disk, manual snapshots and or AutoProtect Snapshots and you should not manually delete them from the Virtual Machine's Package in Finder as you could cripple and or render the Virtual Machine useless if you do not know exactly what you're doing. You need to try and resolve this via the Fusion GUI and the Snapshot window.

Tried to print a listing but can figure out how to do that.

Have a look at the "Get a file listing of the .vmwarevm bundle" section of .

[rbenash]

Followed the directions in you helpers above and am attaching the file list for the bundle. Hopefully you may find some time to take a look to see if this can help tell what's going on?

[WoodyZ]

Well the file listing by itself is not adequate enough information to analyze the situation and especially when it looks like the Virtual Machine was originally named Cisco Windows XP Professional 2 and the virtual hard drive is named rbenash-wxp.amer.cisco.com (2)-<...>.vmdk so the only way I can start to analyze this without asking a bunch of questions which I'm not inclined to do since I can glean most of it from you doing the following...

To help figure out what is what the best way to provide comprehensive diagnostic information is to use the "Collect Support Information" command from the VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > Collect Support Information and then attach the .tgz file it created on your Desktop.

[rbenash]

Thanks Woody - tgz attached

[WoodyZ]

Okay, you've got yourself a bit of a mess here...

It appears that the Base Disk is located at "/Users/rbenash/Desktop/rbenash-wxp.amer.cisco.com (2)/rbenash-wxp.amer.cisco.com (2).vmdk" and the Snapshots, most of which are AutoProtect Snapshots, are located at "/Users/rbenash/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Cisco Windows XP Professional 2.vmwarevm" and this can be dangerous as it makes it easier to brake the Virtual Machine when it's split between two different locations like this and also makes it a bit harder to clean up but it's doable.

From within the Virtual Machine how much of the Virtual Hard Drive is Used and how much is Free?

Also according to the information in the .tgz file there is only about 54.78 GB available on the OS X Macintosh HD and that could be an issue depending on the answer to the other question.

Also do you have FireWire/USB External Hard Drive with space available and if so what are the stats on that?

[rbenash]

"From within the Virtual Machine how much of the Virtual Hard Drive is Used and how much is Free?"38.2 GB free out of 74.5 GB ""Also do you have FireWire/USB External Hard Drive with space available and if so what are the stats on that?"

There are two USB drives available, on is 1.5 TB the other is the old system drive (270 GB). All of this space is pretty much available. But I would like to get this VM under control. I don't understand why it should be taking up roughly 150 GB of drive space ? Guess that's what were trying to figure out?

[WoodyZ]

Ive already told you why and that is there are Snapshots some of which are AutoProtect Snapshots. Have you looked at the Snapshot windows and also unchecked Only show my snapshots?

Have a look at: VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > VMware Fusion Help > Using Snapshots and AutoProtect > Viewing Snapshots in the Snapshots Window

Before doing anything you need to make sure that you have a current full user data backup of the user data that is on the virtual machine and have it stored outside of the virtual machine itself.

If you cannot use the Snapshots window to process the Snapshots according to what you want to archive with the controls available and the implications of any actions taking while using those controls then you will have to proceed to an alternative method which involves disk imaging by one of several different methods but first see if you can clean this up usin the Fusion GUI specifically the Snapshots window.

[rbenash]

Thanks Woody - just a quick check looking at snapshots (with the box mentioned above unchecked). Screenshot attached. Off to work. I definitely take a closer look as time provides today. Looks like there are two ap's one for the 25th and one for the 27th. That appears normal I think?

In the file list of the package I saw 9 different sets of "s" (sorry newbies doesn't know the proper name) files. Is each one of those sets associated with a snapshot? Just wondering why there are nine versions in the package.

Off to the day job. I take a detailed look using your suggestions and update.

Thanks again for taking the time on this.

[rbenash]

Went into rollback and simply deleted the two snapshots that were shown. System went into a 40 minutes or so cleanup. Now I have 178G of free space on the system drive.

Thanks for your help and patience!

[rbenash]

Final update. Noticed that the auto protect snapshot mentioned above was in fact not deleted. After deleting that this morning free host drive space is now 208.5 Gb.

I will leave auto protect to take one snapshot a day and keep one for awhile to monitor behavior.