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xadox
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After migration to VMFS6 Snapshot not possible anymore

After migration from VMFS5 to VMFS 6.81 I am not able to create a snapshot of a specific mashine anymore.

The mashine is a Microsoft Server 2012 R2 Standard on an ESXi 6.5.

The compatiblity level is set to ESXi 6.5 and later (VM version 13) and 10309 Tools are installed.

The mashine has two vmdk's. The first one has 40GB with MBR. The second one has 2.25TB with GPT.

The VMFS6 storage has a size of 3TB.

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a_p_
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This seems to be a very, very old VM (monolithicFlat, buslogic, HW-Version 4) ;-)))

Has this VM been created with another product (e.g. VMware Server, or Workstation) and migrated to ESXi at a later time?

What should help is to svMotion just the 40GB virtual disk - with selecting a target format other than "Same format as source" - to convert the virtual disk to a "VMFS" format.

André

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aadi369
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migrate it to another host and try....still if it dint work restart VM and try.......

last option ...try to connect to individual esxi host and try again.

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xadox
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Migrated to another host, already.

Restarted the VM multiple times, also.

Tried to backup from ESX host directly without luck.

Have to shutdown the mashine and try to backup then.

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aadi369
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Go to the location of VM files in datastore and compare, if any stale entry of delta disk is lying there....

Try to storage migrate the VM and check further.

Try to un-register and register the VM again.

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a_p_
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Please provide some more details, like error messages when you try to create a snapshot, and whether there are any hints in the VM's vmware.log.

André

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xadox
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Un-registered the mashine and deleted all files but VMX and VMDK. There where no delta files.

Re-registered the mashine. Same problem while tryining to create a snapshot:

SnapshotVMXTakeSnapshotComplete: Snapshot 0 failed: The specified feature is not supported by this version (5).

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xadox
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a_p_
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2018-04-17T04:21:17.236Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-LIB_CREATE   : DiskLibCreateCreateParam: vmfsSparse grain size is set to 1 for '/vmfs/volumes/5ac31e8e-79ef9203-7c71-b083fed14ab4/VM-SERVER1/VM-SERVER1-000001.vmdk'

2018-04-17T04:21:17.236Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-LIB_CREATE   : CREATE CHILD: "/vmfs/volumes/5ac31e8e-79ef9203-7c71-b083fed14ab4/VM-SERVER1/VM-SERVER1-000001.vmdk" -- vmfsSparse cowGran=1 allocType=0 policy=''

2018-04-17T04:21:17.236Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-LIB_CREATE   : CREATE-CHILD: Creating disk backed by 'file'

2018-04-17T04:21:17.237Z| vcpu-0| I125: DiskLib_IsVMFSSparseSupported: vmfssparse is not supported on /vmfs/volumes/5ac31e8e-79ef9203-7c71-b083fed14ab4/VM-SERVER1: f532.

2018-04-17T04:21:17.237Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-VMFS_SPARSE : Failed to create extent /vmfs/volumes/5ac31e8e-79ef9203-7c71-b083fed14ab4/VM-SERVER1//vmfs/volumes/5ac31e8e-79ef9203-7c71-b083fed14ab4/VM-SERVER1/VM-SERVER1-000001-delta.vmdk: The specified feature is not supported by this version (24).

2018-04-17T04:21:17.237Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-LIB_CREATE   : Failed to create link: The specified feature is not supported by this version (24)

2018-04-17T04:21:17.237Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-LIB_CREATE   : DiskLib_CreateChild: failed to create child disk: The specified feature is not supported by this version (24).

Snapshots in VMFS6 datsatore should always be sesparse (see Snapshot Formats on VMFS).

Since you are already on ESXi 6.5 build-7967591, I'd consider this being a bug. However, I cannot reproduce it at the moment.

André

a_p_
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I tried to reproduce the issue. However, even after rebuilding the VM's configuration (.vmx) file from your log, both snapshots are created as sesparse files.

One more guess would be, that there's something in the virtual disk's descriptor file, that causes the issue. Please attach the .vmdk descriptor file "VM-SERVER1.vmdk" to a reply post. You'll need to use s.th. like WinSCP to download this small text file from the datastore.

André

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xadox
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There is no descriptor file. Since I am only using Thick provisioning with a paravirtual scsi controller.

So do I have to look into the header of the two VMDK files of the two virtual disks?

Edit:

I was able to create another datastore with around 3TB. I will clone the mashine to the new storage at friday.

But this time I will not use the option "Same format as source" like at the first migration. Instead I will choose "Thick Eager Zeroed".

Hoping that the VMDK gets created and cloned the right way.

So afterwards the old non working snapshot mashine is still there for testing.

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a_p_
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Each virtual disk consists of two files, the descriptor/header .vmdk file (a small text file) and the data .vmdk file (flat, delta, or sesparse).

The GUI however hides this, by showing a combination of both files, i.e. the descriptor's file name with the data file's size.

That's why I mentioned WinSCP to download the descriptor file.


André

xadox
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Thx for the clarification.
Here the files.

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a_p_
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This seems to be a very, very old VM (monolithicFlat, buslogic, HW-Version 4) ;-)))

Has this VM been created with another product (e.g. VMware Server, or Workstation) and migrated to ESXi at a later time?

What should help is to svMotion just the 40GB virtual disk - with selecting a target format other than "Same format as source" - to convert the virtual disk to a "VMFS" format.

André

xadox
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I am not realy sure on which kind of vmware product this vm was created, but your advice sounds promising.

So like described earlier I will migrate, not clone, the mashine to another storage an convert the VMDK's.

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xadox
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After migrating the VM to another storage and let the VMDK's be converted to VMFS the problem was solved.

Thx for the support a.p.

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