There is no more space for Virtual disk abcdxyz-000001.vmdk. VM not starting.

[AN9]

While trying to start VM, I got an error message. It says the following.

"There is no more space for Virtual disk abcdxyz-000001.vmdk. VM not starting.You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking button.retry. Click button.abort to terminate this session."

In order to further troubleshoot, I found that I have multiple .vmdk files in datastore that may consume the space. But unsure which is the vmdk in use, I am not able to delete the unnecessary one.name of Actual VMDK is ***********_1.vmdk.

Also I am not sure why these are created. I am quite new to VM ware.

My VM ware Esxi is 6.0.0 and V sphere Client version is 6.0.0.

In data store I can see a file named abcdxyz_1-000001.vmdk then .vswp files are created.

Can somebody tell me the procedure to find out which .vmdk files are unnecessary and can be safely deleted from disk.

[a_p_]

... I am not able to delete the unnecessary one.name of Actual VMDK is ***********_1.vmdk.

Never delete files from the datastore browser unless you know exactly what you are doing. Deleting the wrong files will cause data loss!

In this case it looks like someone created a virtual machine snapshot in early 2016, and didn't (forgot to) delete it.

Assuming the snapshot isn't required, shutdown the VM (if it is powered on), then open the Snapshot Manager and click the "Delete All" button. This will delete/consolidate the existing snapshot. If no snapshot shows up in the Snapshot Manager, create a temporary new snapshot to enable the "Delete All" button.

Due to the size of the snapshot files (...-000001.vmdk), deleting the snapshot may take some time, so please be patient!

André

[vijayrana968]

Dont delete any file inside VM folder. Read error again (The highlighted one) : "There is no more space for Virtual disk abcdxyz-000001.vmdk. Its saying FOR, not IN vmdk.

It means there's no more space on the datastore where your VM is running on. Please follow steps : No more space for virtual disk "Windows Server 2012" Error Message

[AN9]

Thanks for reply.

[AN9]

Thanks for all your reply. Deleting the snap shot solves the problem.

But as I am new to this VM world, can you please tell what snapshot is and why it is created?

We have DPM (online backup software) running in our system. While browsing through google,

I found many post stating that one on of the reason for creation of multiple .vmdk file/ snapshot is

that one is having online backup software running. That may lead to cause the generation of multiple .vmdk files.

But I do not know the reason why so?

[a_p_]

Afaik DPM works on the OS level, i.e. not on the Hypervisor level, so it's likely not responsible for the snapshot.

In this case I guess that someone created a snapshot back in March 2016, and simply forgot about it, so that the delta (changed data) files just kept growing, and finally caused the out-of-disk-space situation on the datastore.

Please taks a look at e.g. Understanding VM snapshots in ESXi / ESX (1015180) | VMware KB  for a brief introduction to Snapshots.

André.