Parent image deleted when deleting a VM using a delta-link image

[jinzishuai]

Hi there,

I've created a VM based on a delta-link (aka redo log, linked clone) image. For example, this VM is called child and it uses child.vmdk, which points to parent.vmdk that is located outside of child VM directory. This way, I can have multiple children based on the same parent.vmdk to save disk space.

This has worked great for me.

However, if I choose to "delete from disk" any of the child VM using the vSphere client, not only the child directory is removed, but also the parent.vmdk which is located somewhere else other than the child directory itself. This does not happen if there are other children using the parent. But if I am deleting the only child VM, then the parent.vmdk is deleted as well. This is not good since I still want to keep the parent.vmdk so that I can provision other children later on. Is this a bug or feature for ESXi-4.1? Do I have any way to get around it?

Thank you very much.

Shi

[DSTAVERT]

I would look at scripting for your process. A starting place http://download.virtuallyghetto.com/vGhettoLinkedClone.html plus I would look through the Automation Communities to see what might already exist. http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/automationtools

If you know it is the last child you can "remove from inventory" and manually remove the folder using the datastore browser.

[jinzishuai]

Thank you very much.

Yes, a manual script will definitely work as we would like them to.

However, the problem is that there is nothing preventing an administrator to login directly with vSphere client and delete the image directly. This is where the problem happens.

[DSTAVERT]

I don't know what effect this might have at all but try changing the permissions on the vmdk directly.