Snap Shot not showing in GUI

[SkyRay35]

A snap shot was taken of a server and was deleted. At least I thought it was. It does not show up in the GUI but from the cmd line is show a snap shot file.

Is the snap shot file really being used? Is there a clean way to get rid of it?

Anyone else ever seen this?

[Cameron2007]

have you browsed to the LUN which originally contained this VM and check that the machine is not there. It may heve been removed from the inventory but not deleted from disk. Check if this exists and if there is a .vmsn snapshot file or a delta.vmdk

[SkyRay35]

Thanks Cameron for the reply.

I am new to this stuff, so maybe I did not explain it well. The server is still running, the snap shot was deleted. In the GUI when you go to the menu to delete a snap shot it is greyed out like it has no snap shots. From the cmd line is shows a snap shot file.

????

[dmorgan]

Thats what he was saying... check and see if the physical snapshot file still exists in the datastore. Use the datastore browser in VC, or WinSCP, or shell access, or whatever, to check the datastore.

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[SkyRay35]

There is a delta file there. Here are a few screen dumps. I hope they show up.

Is there a way to tell if the delta file is being used?

The server is running fine. The only issue I have is when there is a problem with the applicaiton, the first thing that the programers point to is the snap shot file. They would not have known is was there unless someone from my group told them about it.

So I am just trying to "clean my house".

Thanks guys,

[kharbin · Accepted solution]

Yes, I see this all the time. GUI shows no snap, but the VM has an active snap. Easiest way to fix this:

Shutdown the VM

Add a snapshot (yes, another one)

Then delete snapshots

This will commit the one you just added, and the previous one

Then turn VM back on

As for your question "

Is there a way to tell if the delta file is being used?", yes, you can look at the date/time stamp of the delta and flat files to see which is greater. Instead of doing an 'ls' for a direcory listing, use "ls -l" for date/time stamp.

my 2 cents

Ken Harbin

www.esXpress.com

[SkyRay35]

Thanks Ken,

We will give this a try this weekend.

[SkyRay35]

OK, this brings up a few questions.

I see that the delta file has a time stamp of July of 07. So this tells me that the file in not being used???

So if we create and then delete the new snapshot will it write data from the old snapshot delta file to the current vmdk file?

I would hate to put old data onto the current server.

I sure like this place. Quick answers.

[kharbin]

Yes, if the delta is dated July, 07 then I would say it is safe to say it is not being used. Left over artifact from a bad day for that VM.

You should be able to delete it. If you get an access denied message, then it is still being used, but Vmware won't let you delete a file in use.

Ken

www.esXpress.com

[SkyRay35]

Well we tried this weekend to create another snapshot and then delete it. It did not work.

I guess we will try and delete the delta file???

Paul

[Banshee]

Hi,

From the command line:

Do as follow:

cat <VM>.vmx

look if you can find something like this: scsi0:0.fileName = "myVM.vmdk"

if you see allot of zero's behind myVM.vmdk (like this: myVM-000002.vmdk ) this means that your VM is still using the snapshot.

It can be that your .vmsd is corrupted or your snapshot.

What you can do is edit the vmx record and let it point to an older snapshot or you can rename the .vmsd and create a new snapshot from the command line and then commit it( delete it).

Albert