vSphere Storage Appliance

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  • 1.  Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 04:24 PM

    Is anyone have an issue where there datastore is running out of space. It is chewing up about 1GB per day. I am running ESXi 5.5 I have two VM's each with 1TB thick provisioned. Is there an area that I can check to remove logs or something. I have checked to make sure there is no snapshots or log files. Running out of time and space...



  • 2.  RE: Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 05:16 PM

    I have checked to make sure there is no snapshots or log files

    Where did you look for the snapshots? Snapshot Manager may not always show the snapshots. Please open the datastore browser to see whether there are <vmname>-00000x.vmdk files in the VM's folder. Depending on the ESXi version you are running you can either "Consolidate" snapshots even if they don't show up in the Snapshot Manager, or simply create a new snapshot and then click "Delete All".

    Note: Although very unlikely, but in case you are running ESXi 4.0 prior to Update 2, remember that deleting multiple snapshots using "Delete All" may require a certain amount of additional disk space on the datastore to succeed!

    André



  • 3.  RE: Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 05:32 PM

    I am running ESXi 5.5. I have several of these files. I am enclosing a screen shot. I have deleted downloaded and removed these files before and the VM no longer works. I re-upload and it works. I appreciate the help in any way.



  • 4.  RE: Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 05:53 PM

    VMware uses all of these files in a chain, deleting one of the files will break the chain resulting in a non-working VM (as you already found out). What you want to do is to delete the snapshots from the "Snapshot Manager", or by right clicking the VM and selecting "Consolidate". This will merge the data from the snapshot files into the VM's base disk. Since you mentioned that the base disk has been thick provisioned, this shouldn't require much additional (temporary) disk space. However, due to the size of the snapshots, it may take some time, so please be patient.

    André



  • 5.  RE: Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 06:18 PM

    I appreciate your help. Here is a screen shot from the snapshot manager. There is no option to consolidate. I have already deleted the snapshots some time ago. Again thanks for the help...



  • 6.  RE: Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 06:33 PM

    Assuming you don't need these snapshots anymore, all you need to do is to click "Delete All", and wait patiently for the task to finish. After that there shouldn't be any snapshot files (<vmname>-00000x.vmdk) in the VM's folder anymore. If there are still such files in the VMs folder please let me know.

    André



  • 7.  RE: Datastore running out of disk space

    Posted Jan 08, 2016 09:44 PM

    That did the trick. Thank you very much for your help. I freed up almost 100GB of space.