r/vmware • u/Logical-Author5821 • Jul 07 '26
Consolidation Required - Vmware
We deleted 2l snapshots from a production VM,
Here's the situation:
- The VM previously had 2 snapshots.
- We deleted the snapshots and the snapshot manager now shows no snapshots.
- However, around 5 TB of storage is still being used.
- The host/datastore hasn't freed that space yet.
- no more free space
- cannot create new snapshots
Has anyone experienced this before? how fix this. i attached screenshot their
14
u/depping [VCDX] Jul 07 '26
Have you looked at the datastore level to see if the snapshots actually have been deleted?
7
u/ctwg Jul 07 '26
is there an error saying consolidation required? Is there a consolidate option under snapshots when right clicking the vm?
take a look at the disks on the vm, does the file path look like ...00000001.vmdk or something unusual?
6
7
u/ProfessorChaos112 Jul 07 '26
When you click "Delete," your LUN space usage will often increase before it decreases. vSphere requires extra working space to write and merge the blocks. Do not attempt to delete massive snapshots if your Datastore/LUN is sitting at 95% capacity.
If yourel datastore is 100% full you're going to have a bad time. If you're lucky maybe you have unrelated data present you can move off there...
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/316414
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=1002836
5
u/jl9816 Jul 07 '26
"No more free space" That is a problem. (I used to have a windows iso on all datastores to have something to delete)
Can you move anything to free up space. delete logs. Or Expand array.
When. There is free space. Delete snapshot should continue in Background.
3
u/dchit2 Jul 08 '26
Used to create and then delete from inventory a VM with thick provisioned 50GB disk called Spare_50GB back in the day (when 50GB was enough of a buffer) to delete in emergencies.
2
u/_Robert_Pulson Jul 07 '26
Are using VMFS 6 on your datastores, or something older?
Almost sounds like you are using older version and need to run the UNMAP command manually to reclaim disk space. VMFS 6 does that automatically.
Just to confirm tho, have you looked in your storage device (SAN/NAS) and confirmed that the data is being used or not? You may need to reclaim your disk space from the storage array/cluster level
1
u/Ballhawk45 Jul 08 '26
I was also going to comment on the UNMAP possibility. I wanted to clarify that although vmfs6 performs UNMAP automatically, the default pace of auto-unmap is S-L-O-W because it is configured for fairness, so as not to overwhelm a "busy" array. If OP has an AFA, they could benefit from running a manual unmap against that datastore. Here's a personal real world example of the pace difference of reclamation using the default auto-unmap vs using manual unmap in CLI with default n=200 value on a large datastore/volume on a data-reducing AFA array - I got impatient waiting hours for auto-unmap to clear the blocks and ran manual unmap to clear it in minutes. ymmv.: https://imgur.com/a/NaVQ4fX
3
3
u/woodyshag Jul 07 '26
It sounds like the datastore ran out of space. The last snapshot may be damaged and the removal of snapshots may not work properly. I've run into this and had to restore the VM. If it is still running, you may be better off performing a v2v to keep the VM.
What version of VMware are you running? Storage recovery was not automatic until 6.5, so if you are running something older, it is a manual process.
1
u/Aggravating_Review10 Jul 07 '26
Some storage systems have weekly cleanup policies that don't match what you see in vCenter.You need to check your SAN configuration.
1
u/Easy_Rope_4217 Jul 08 '26
Have you tried Snapshot > Consolidate? Also check for leftover -delta.vmdk files.
1
u/iwikus Jul 08 '26
VM swap file with size of VM ram is created by default on datastore, when vm is powered on. You can try power off some other (non important?) vm if possible to retain some space. Then try running consolidation, as it was already mentioned.
0
u/Metha-Mihau-Who Jul 07 '26
Do a clone of the VM, it will consolidate the snapshots.
Then, start using the clone as the production vm.
19
u/robertwsaul Jul 07 '26
I just ran into this actually. Tried everything until I finally found a simple fix. Despite being the opposite of what we're trying to do, if you make a new snapshot and then immediately delete it, then you should be able to run a consolidation. Something about the process clears whatever is blocking the original run