VM snapshot consolidation fails due to locked files in VSAN.

[terrible_towel]

Hello,

I'm on vSphere 6.0U3 and VSAN 6.2 (on disk format 3). I've been using vRanger 7.3.1 in production.
Is anyone else using vRanger to backup VMs that are on VSAN datastores?

I have the following issue:

If a VM has a VM level manual snapshot before vRanger backup runs:

- vRanger does a backup (takes its own snapshot, backup complete, removes vranger snapshot)
- VM now has an alert that says a VM snapshot consolation required.

Manual VM snapshot consolidations fail due to locked files within VSAN.
Manual VM snapshot delete works fine, however snapshot consolidation continues to fail with locked files errors.

The locked files persist indefinitely, even if all vRanger components are shutdown.

However --- this fix works every time: vmotion VM to ANY other host in cluster. VM snapshot consolidation works.
(this presumably releases whatever lock was on the files)

I have been working with VMware support for literally MONTHS with this issue... so I thought I would ask this forum if anyone else is using the products in the same combination. 

None of this happens if the VM is not on a VSAN datastore (i.e. local, NFS, or iscsi).  Also, none of this happens if there are no VM level snapshots.

Thanks.

[zdickinson]

Good morning, I would say that this is fairly common and I would look at vRanger for the problem.  In my experience, most problems I have run into with vSAN are related to third parties treating vSAN like a traditional datastore.  I would verify that your version of vRanger specifically supports your version of vSAN.  Which also leads me to a question.  Can you be running vSphere 6.0 and vSAN 6.2?

Summary, I think you already have your fix/work around.  Thank you, Zach.