Disk Will Not Consolidate

[RVANOC]

I have a singular host who drives won't Consolidate. I accidently deleted the Snapshot before consolidating.  The Error vCenter is giving :Failed to copy source. I was give the command services.sh restart to fix this issue. After running the command I still get the same error.

[a_p_]

I accidently deleted the Snapshot before consolidating.

Can you please explain this? How exactly did you delete the snapshot?

André

[Alex_Romeo]

Hi,

Initially I would say that it is better if you install the vmware tools to that virtual machine.

If you have the option to move all the virtual machines to another host, I would try a reboot of the Esxi host.

ARomeo

[TheBobkin]

AlessandroRomeo68, sorry but your suggestions here aren't likely to help - vmware tools would only be relevant when taking a snapshot and needing to quiesce, this isn't the problem here.

Secondly, this doesn't look to be a case of failing to lock the file (which is why assume you said to reboot the host) - rebooting a host isn't going to restore lost data and in all likelihood could only make matters worse.

RVANOC, when you say "deleted the Snapshot" do you mean used 'delete all' option or did you literally delete it from disk via rm or delete option in datastore browser?

If you did delete it then we would be interested in 1. how long was it running on that last snapshot and 2. do you have a current backup of this VM?

If it was not running on the snapshot for long then it may be a feasible option to bypass the missing snapshot by pointing to the next snapshot in the chain (it is 000003.vmdk so assuming not just one snapshot on this disk). However, the implication of doing so means any data that was on that missing/deleted snapshot will be permanently gone even if you did somehow manage to get it back as the disk it was based on will now be changed (though this can be avoided by cloning the current vmdk and all available snapshots into a new disk and using that instead).

Also, as an aside - if you want to obfuscate the name of a VM you should use a broad marker or fill as opposed to scribbling on it with narrow brush, it would only take a moment to unobfuscate that.

Bob

[RVANOC]

I clicked on Manage Snapshots and clicked Snapshots Delete All.

[TheBobkin]

That doesn't delete snapshots - that consolidates all of them.

"Note: Clicking Delete All commits all the immediate snapshots before the You are here current active state to the base disk and removes all existing snapshots for that virtual machine."

VMware Knowledge Base

Bob

[Alex_Romeo]

TheBobkin

• I never wrote that installing the "vmware tools" would solve the problem, it is always better to install them, always!
• From the question it seems to me that he is more interested in resolving the error message than in recovering the deleted snapshot.

ARomeo

[Alex_Romeo]

TheBobkin If he does not have a backup of the Snapshot's 00000x.vmdk disk, he cannot recover what was inside it anywhere.

The Snapshot when deleted is irreversible only from a backup you can recover it.

ARomeo

[TheBobkin]

AlessandroRomeo68,while it is advised to have vmware tools installed, that is a warning message not an error message.

The title of the post is "Disk Will Not Consolidate" and OP has an actual error message stating their disks won't consolidate and thus this is what they are asking about, but they seem to have mistaken 'delete all' as meaning delete the data as opposed to consolidate and there is fair chance there is actually nothing wrong with the data and it may just be a case of locked base-disk (or snapshot lower in the chain).

RVANOC, is there an ongoing/pending/failed backup job on this VM or were the snapshots taken manually?

Is there an ongoing or stalled take snapshot job running on this VM?

Did you at all try to change/revert where in the snapshot chain the VM is using via the snapshot manager?

You can check the vmware.log of the VM which resides in its namespace folder for more details on why it failing to consolidate as well as the vmkernel.log from the host the VM is registered on. Additionally it is fairly trivial to check the lock-owners of the vmdks in chain of disk noted in the error message and/or use 'lsof | grep -i vmNameHere' on the hosts that potentially have file locks, more info on these here:

VMware Knowledge Base

VMware Knowledge Base

Bob