Snapshot problems, please help!

[jonb157]

We have a VM that has growing Delta files due to snapshots. We received an error message last night that the LUN was runnning out of space. We tried to delete ALL snapshots but the VM hung and we had to run a "kill -9 When we powered on the machine it came up okay, but Virtual Center shows no snapshots, but there ARE still delta files out there that are growing. We need to know how to delete them without affecting the Production VM Server. The server virtual disk is currently pointing to VM000003-vmdk and it's second disk is currently pointing to VM_1000003-vmdk. However I see about 6 other delta files in its directory. (VM000002-delta.vmdk, etc.)

[admin]

Yikes - I would open an SR with Tech Support, not sure how to help you.

This is just another reason for everybody to start thinking about their processes and procedures surrounding snapshots?

Why are you doing them?

Have you thought this through, do you have enough disk space?

How many snaps are you keeping in a vmfs, for a vm.

Why are you doing snapshots?

Why are you doing snapshots?

Why are you doing snapshots?

Snap, copy commit!

[jonb157]

I agree with you all the way. It looks like someone had access to take snaps on this machine who didn't know what they were doing or wasn't educated enough to manage snapshots. I don't even need the snapshots anymore, but I delete the old delta files, I assume that will screw up the active virtual disks because the nature of how this works; am I correct?

[admin]

I am pretty sure there is a way out of this.

I will have to play with it a bit.

Like I said - perhaps TS has a quick fix.

[kix1979]

Firstly, backup the VM before doing anything else. Secondly, you can manually go into the VMSD file associated with the VM (on the SC) and edit it and sometimes that will make it show up. Also you can add another snapshot, I know..., but that usually fixes the tree and then you can commit all of them.

Kix

[jonb157]

Taking another snapshot was a good idea, so I tried that. Unfortanetely the old ones didn't show up. So I went to delete the new snapshot and noticed it was called "Consolidate Helper". Very strange. I ended up powering off the VM, then deleting all snapshots through the "vmware-cmd .vmx removesnapshots" command. I was hoping it would delete the consolidate helper snap, but about 1.5 hours later I noticed the old delta files were gone! Yippee! So I powered on the VM and started getting scared because chkdsk loaded in Windows and found about 500 corrupt files. However the server eventually loaded into Windows and all the data seems accurate and there. I'll chalk it up as a "lucky day".

[admin]

This is the usual reason for these stuck "Consolodate Helper" snapshots. You need to power off the VM to commit the snaps, and rename the VMDKs to make sure they all have unique names.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=5096672&sl...