VMware vSphere

Good morning, 

I thought I had asked a similar question a while back but I can't find it so here's my current situation. I have a datastore that I'm retiring and was just checking to make sure that all VMs have been vMotioned off of it. I found some folders with current VM names that still have a file or two in them with .png, .vmdk, and .vmsn extensions. I tried consolidating them from the ESXi hosts themselves but nothing changed. I was going to just delete these files but wanted to know if they were important. Should I try to do something else to remove the files or can I just delete them? A couple of them are recent but none of them are current. 

Thanks, 

Joe B 

One would need to investigate whether the files are somhow still in use. Especially the .vmdk files are important, because they represent virtual disks.
Instead of deleting the files right away, you may consider to create a sub-directory, and move the files to it. If the files can be moved without error messages ("in use" or similar), and all the VMs continue to work as expected you can then delete the files.

Remember, that in case you have templates, they may only show up under VMs and Tepmlates.

André

Moderator: Moved to vSphere Discussions

Hi ,

The .png files are probably Console screenshots that were taken at some point. Those are save to delete. In regards to the others. What I usually do is manually, or scripted, check all the VM's that were on the datastore if the disks are on another datastore. If they are, it's save to delete them.

The main thing that gives it away is the last edited date. If the disks is actively connected to a PoweredOn VM, the disk will have a current timestamp.

Sorry for the delay.

I checked those files and they all had old time stamps so they have been removed from the datastore. I was trying to un-mount the datastore and received an error message stating that it had VMs on it. I checked and saw that there are now three VMs sitting on it. I went to Manage > Files and there are no files on this datastore for these VMs. I tried to vMotion them off onto the datastore that has the actual files on it but after about a second the vMotion finishes and everything is still the same. I was going to vMotion them off to the new datastore but I don't want more duplicated files. What is my next step here?

Thanks,

Joe B

So the old files are now gone, and all of a sudden you can see three VM's on it? Can you give me some screenshots on this?

Also, please check any CD-ROM mount configurations to make sure there is no configuration left that is pointing to this old datastore. It looks to me that this might be the case.

Thanks bryanvaneeden, that was it. Even though the VMs were disconnected from the image on the datastore those VMs were still pointing to it. Time to finish this job and move on to one of the plethora of others needing my attention. 

Thanks again, 

Joe B