I have started Consolidating While VM was running.

[TauqeerAhmad104]

I started the Consolidating while VM was running in ESXi7. Now the job shows 100% but it's still there and in the mean time VM is not accessible. How much time will it take and Do I need to do something or give more time? 

[a_p_]

I shouldn't really take long, and the VM should remain accessible, except that the guest OS has heavy load/disk activity.
I wouldn't cancel the process, as this could cause issues.

André

[a.tinivelli]

why did you perform a "consolidate"?

had the Vm a snapshot to be removed? Did you try "delete snapshot" first?

[TauqeerAhmad104]

Hi yes, I deleted the snapshot first and then it showed a warning about consolidating. I started the job of consolidate without powering off the VM. 

[a.tinivelli]

ok, hard to say more without knowing more about the context.

maybe you can find some tips to investigate what's happening in this my old post

https://blog.tinivelli.com/vm-needs-consolidation-warning-and-backup-software-daad4751d275

[Nathan Savolskis]

In a thread from some time ago, a similar topic was about restarting during a consolidation effort.  Not the same case, but some insight.

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/ESXi-Discussions/Restarting-a-machine-during-snapshot-removal/td-p/2655239#:~:text=when%20you%20are%20removing%20(consolidating,normally%20can%20restart%20the%20vm.

That said, are you using any third-party software to do this task or are you using the native vSphere tools?

Another question is the size/spec of the VM in question.  I've seen in other cases where if the VM was sufficiently large, and snapshots were taken often (like daily), that the process took longer than normal.  

If this is a critical vm, do you have a back-up handy (just in case)? If it is, have a recovery procedure ready, but if not (critical) I'd restart the VM to shake the process loose, and get your VM back to being accessible.

[TauqeerAhmad104]

This is another issue I am facing. I am not able to power off this VM. It shows an error another process is running. As per the third-party tool, I am using the Esxi 7 web console.  All I see is this in the pic. 

[a.tinivelli]

ok but you could try starting with

[root@host: /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm] tail -f vmware.log

and look for some error there

[Nathan Savolskis]

Well, again, if the VM is not critical, here is a great KB with steps using CLI to force the VM to shutdown.  While CLI is more nerdy and not as fun to look at, it is much more powerful than the web interface GUI.

Fair warning, it takes some time, planning, and I'd document everything as you go, but the KB has good step-by-step instructions. 

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1004340

It also includes a recommendation that if you still cannot force the VM to shutdown after those steps, to restart the ESXi host completely.  If you have to go that far, I would recommend migrating your other working VMs off that ESXi host first so that you're only dealing with one rouge VM (and you can see how it gets migrated off that ESXi during reboot, assuming you're running a cluster and have DRS in effect.