Snapshot consolidation failure may be caused by a mismatched amount of snapshots (Disk1 has 2 snapshots, Disk2 has 1 snapshot)

[nriacone]

I have a situation where we had our VM's on our 5.1 Server become unresponsive this morning due to running out of disk space. Upon investigation we found that one server indicates that Disk1 has 2 snapshots and Disk2 has one snapshot. The screenshot of the environment is contained in the attached MS Word file. We should be able to free up over 380 GB's of storage by deleting on of the snapshot files. I just need to know what process I should take to accomplish this.

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

If you are trying to delete the snapshot which is around 380 GB in a  VM PowerOn state then you will require all most equivalent free space to delete the same.

In your case you do not have a free space so would recommend to PowerOff the VM and then delete the snapshot by this it will not require additional space and you can free up the space.

[a_p_]

We should be able to free up over 380 GB's of storage by deleting on of the snapshot files.

You say " ... by deleting of the snapshot files". Just to ensure, NEVER delete snapshot files from the datastore, or you will loose data!

According to the screenshot you provided, the virtual disks are thin provisioned. With the current base disk's, and the snapshot disk's sizes, you may need up to ~130GB of additional, temporary disk space to delete the snapshots from the Snapshot Manager.

Please check whether you can migrate some of the other VM's to other datstores to free up the required disk space on this datastore. Alternatively, you may migrate the VM in question to another datasatore with sufficient free disk space. Since you already ran out of disk space, I'd suggest you do this with the VM powered off.

André

[nriacone]

A.P.,

When I check Snapshot Manager for DL-WSRV-003 there are no snapshots present. What action should I take next?

Thanks,

Nick

[a_p_]

A blank Snapshot Manager screen is usually the case if deleting snapshots doesn't succeed.

Anyway, what I'd suggest that you do, is to free up sufficient disk space on the datastore, then shut down the VM, create another snapshot, and finally click "Delete All" in the Snapshot Manager. This will merge the data of all the snapshots into the base disks. Note that this will take considerable time, due to the size of the snapshot, and that you will not be able to power on the VM while the process is running, so you may need to plan some downtime for the VM.

André