Maintenance/cleanup on data stores?

[bfrakes]

Like most users, we create VM's, use them a while, then use vCenter to down them and remove them when they are not needed anymore.  Also, we have create VM's and for some reason it was not configured properly or we tried an "an experiment" the didn't work and we removed it.

in browsing the data stores, I notice items there that I feel like are left over from one of these deletions but are reluctant to try to delete it for fear of blowing up one of my critical VM's.

Are there VMWare tools, or third party tools that can analyze the data stores and identify the trash and help manage them?

TIA

Jedi

[Boloo]

Hi:

You can try a free tool called RVTOOLS http://www.robware.net/

It gets some cool information about your environment. And it say you which orphan files you have.

Take a look to the tool and say us if it solves your question.

[bfrakes]

Downloaded the app and it is very good.

I show several possible Zombie vmx and vmdk files, but when I try to remove them after checking to make sure they are not needed, vCenter tells me I can delete them.  Not sure why?

It also shows Inconsistent Foldername for some of the VM's.  Not sure how to correct this either.

So far, I've recovered aobut 500G from my 4 repositories.

Very cool...

Thanks...

[a_p_]

... vCenter tells me I can delete them.

Assuming this is a typo and you meant "cannot delete", please provide some details. e.g. error messages, logs, ...

It also shows Inconsistent Foldername for some of the VM's.

This is not really an issue. By default the folder names and the files (.vmx and others) have the same names and unless someone changed anything manually this should be the case. Do you have an example or two?

André

[bfrakes]

Yes, I meant cannot delete....

I have a VM obnvftp which is my ftp server.

It has five vmdk extra files and the active one:

obnvftp-000002.vmdk -- obnvftp-000006.vmdk

I checked and the VM uses the obnvftp.vmdk file.

They are the duplicate vmdk size: 24,576.00 KB  The active vmdk is: 17,129,470.00 KB.

The active one modified date is: 09/30/2012 1:36:47 PM

The others  have modified dates ranging from: 03/24/2012 to 09/29/2012

When I try to delete them I get:

Cannot delete file [VMRepository3] obnvftp/obnvftp-000006.vmdk

Other VM's that have had multiple vmdk file, I could remove.

I've tried shutting the VM down and then deleting, same error.

I'm not too worried about the folder names...

Any advice would be helpful...

[a_p_]

I checked and the VM uses the obnvftp.vmdk file.

Is this the file which currently shows up in the VM's configuration? Either in the VM's HDD settings or the VM's .vmx file?

The 00000x.vmdk files are snapshots and should never be deleted manually through e.g. the Datastore Browser. This will destroy the VM!

Snapshots in VMware applications are used as chains, where each chain link is in use. Please take a look at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180. In case you believe one or more .vmdk files are not necessary (which should never be the case), I'd recommend you power off the VM and then power it back on. This will create a new vmware.log in the VM's folder which lists all the .vmdk files in use.

André

[bfrakes]

In looking at the three files I've attached, I see no snapshots that were created.  My Commvault backup system does make snapshots when the backup cycle runs.  I'm thinking it uses the VMWare dll's to do this, since the CV backup also uses the Microsoft SQL dll's to do the database backups.

Even though they don't show in VM, they are more than likely my CV snapshots.

What do you think?

Thanks for the expert advice...

[a_p_]

This looks like CV creates the snapshots,but still accesses the files (i.e. locks them) at the time they should be deleted. It's absolutely unusual that snapshot files remain on the datastore after backup. Please take a look at the log files (vmware.log as well as the CV logs) to see whether you can identify the cause of this behavior.

If you cannot delete any of these snapshot files then there must be an issue with VC/ESXi which results in some processes not properly terminating, which lock these files.

André

[bfrakes]

In watching my CV reports, I've seen that the VC backup in my CV does occasionally fail.  I will investigate with Dell/CV and determine why.  I have managed to cleanup the datastores with the help of RVTools, so I'm not too concerned with the leftover snapshots that I cannot delete.

All your assistance has been very helpful.

Thanks...