Do you know that you still need to perform VMware snapshot consolidation after the failure of reverting or deleting a snapshot? This article will introduce it to you in details.

In vSphere 5, VMware introduced the Consolidation option, which is used when the associated disks are not committed back to the base disk after you revert or delete VMware snapshots. You will remove redundant delta disk files that are left over from failed snapshot restore, delete, or delete all operations. It can improve the VM performance and save storage space. Snapshot consolidation does not require additional free disk space if all VM disks are thick provisioned.

But if your VM disks are thin provisioned , it may require up to the same size of free space as the snapshot size.

In general, the larger the snapshot is, the longer the snapshot consolidation process will take. But it is not easy to determine exactly how long it will take. Many other factors may affect it directly or indirectly, including the depth of the virtual disk snapshot chain, the type of data, the storage array performance, etc.

You can estimate the time required for snapshot consolidation by monitoring the throughput on the datastore, monitoring throughput for snapshot consolidation only, or estimating the time on a test VM. If a VM requires snapshot consolidation, you will get a VMware error: virtual machine disks consolidation is needed to inform you that there are redundant delta disk files. To solve the VMware error: virtual machine disk consolidation is needed, you just need to perform the snapshot consolidation as required.

In addition, it can further save storage space and improve VM performance. Open an SSH shell session to the host that is performing the consolidation and snapshot deletion task by running the following vim-cmd command:.

If you encounter the VMware error: An error occurred while consolidating disks. Here are the possible reasons and their solutions:.

As you can see, taking too many snapshots, or keeping them for long can both lead to many errors, even data loss. This is because the snapshots are dependent on the parent disks. Therefore, snapshots are often used as quick failsafe before performing development or testing, capable of rolling back in case of any problem.

But if you want a VM data protection measure in production environments, it is much better to take a VM backup than a snapshot. A VM backup is an independent copy of the VM that can be safely stored offsite, cloud, or other locations. By restoring from a VM backup you will get an instantly usable VM. If you encountered the VMware error: virtual machine disks consolidation is needed, it is informing you that you need to perform snapshot consolidation manually after the snapshot revert, delete, or delete all operations.

In this article, I introduced what is VMware snapshot consolidation, when and how you can perform it on your VMs, analyzed the reasons why the snapshots consolidation fails and the relevant solutions.

Snapshot consolidation often fails because of the improperly usage of VM snapshots. Most importantly, please do not take VM snapshot as VM backups. What is snapshot consolidation Snapshot consolidation is used to merge the snapshot delta disk files to the VM base disk. Consolidating a snapshot : You will remove redundant delta disk files that are left over from failed snapshot restore, delete, or delete all operations.

How long does snapshot consolidation take In general, the larger the snapshot is, the longer the snapshot consolidation process will take. There is no free space on the datastore to perform consolidation. Third-party backup application is performing backups thus locked snapshot files.

You have too many snapshots up to 32 recommended by VMware. You have one large snapshot is consolidating now. How to perform snapshot consolidation To solve the VMware error: virtual machine disk consolidation is needed, you just need to perform the snapshot consolidation as required. In this section, I will introduce 3 different ways to consolidate snapshot. How to perform snapshot consolidation via ESXi web client 1.

The reasons why snapshot consolidation failed and solutions If you encounter the VMware error: An error occurred while consolidating disks. The content ID of the parent virtual disk does not match the corresponding parent content ID in the child — correct the CID of the disks reference each other using text editor.

The free space is not enough — free space on the datastore msg. You can click the following button to start a free trial. Best Enterprise Backup Solution. Trusted by:. Still Need Help? Have your problem been solved? If not, please input query in the search box below.

 
 

Vmware workstation 12 consolidate snapshots free.VMware – Clone a VM with snapshots (and consolidate it)

 

Он сказал, что в прошлом году сам установил переключатель. Личный помощник директора отказывался верить ее словам. – Никогда не слышал об. – Никто не слышал. Это было сделано тайно.

 

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Recently we had a weird issue in our office. Worktsation had one virtual machine with a snapshot. But someone created that snapshot before a software upgrade and forget to delete it. So this snapshot was growing and growing. We found out that there is a snapshot when the VM vmware workstation 12 consolidate snapshots free service owner requested http://replace.me/25058.txt additional disk space.

So we scheduled a maintenance window to delete the snapshot. Faster said than done. The VM went offline because of disk consolidation. That could happen, depending on snapshot size and storage system. But the VM not only went offline for some time, but unexpectedly for hours. Together with VMware support we were able to stop the snapshot deletion. We found out that this consolldate was about GB in size.

What a bummer! So we scheduled another maintenance window to consolidate that snapshot. Some research and again having a chat with VMware snapsjots led us towards cloning the disk files. During the cloning of a disk file the snapshot will snspshots consolidated. So we had out action plan.

And we scheduled another maintenance window with the service owner. What we should use here as a source file is the descriptor file that points to our snapshot.

Now as you have cloned the VMDK file and committed the snapshot into vmware workstation 12 consolidate snapshots free new folder, you can either create an vmware workstation 12 consolidate snapshots free shell Vmaare with the exact configuration as the source VM, add the cloned VMDK as an existing disk, or you can remove the source disk from the source На этой странице configuration and add it there as existing disk.

And a vjware vmkfstools reference As for your support, please see the help output of vmkfstools below.