Comments on: Virtual machine disk consolidation needed.

By: magander3

magander3 — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 19:37:02 +0000

In reply to Anthony Maw. Thanks for the info //Magnus

By: Anthony Maw

Anthony Maw — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 16:36:07 +0000

I have found that for those VMs that report “Disk consolidation needed” after vSphere Data Protection appliance backup, if you check the VDP appliance hardware configuration you may see that there are extra VM’s disk files attached to the appliance.

It looks like the VDP backup appliance takes a snapshot, attaches the target VM disk to itself *temporarily* and then makes the backup.

After the backup it is supposed to release/dismount the VM disk and consolidate the snapshot since it was backing up a running VM, but sometimes it fails to release/unmounts the VM disk file so the VM disk remains locked in a snapshot mode.

Attempting to do a manual snapshot consolidation fails because the VDP appliance has an open file handle of the VMDK – very frustrating!!!!

When I look at my own VDP backup appliance in vCenter, I have seen sometimes up to two extra VM Hard disks mounted.

The solution is easy: Just click the Remove button to dismount them.

I can then manually do a snapshot consolidation procedure to clear the VM warning message about “Disk consolidation needed” it usually finishes in less than a minute.

By: magander3

magander3 — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 06:58:01 +0000

In reply to imstaceysdad. thanks for the info, what version ? //Magnus

By: imstaceysdad

imstaceysdad — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 05:02:06 +0000

Just adding a note that restarting vxpa service fixed this same issue for me with zero downtime.

By: magander3

magander3 — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 06:54:42 +0000

In reply to Ayotunde Itayemi.

Hi,
as always it depends:)
Check KB https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003490?src=vmw_so_vex_mande_12 to verify if it will have any impact on your system.

//Magnus

By: Ayotunde Itayemi

Ayotunde Itayemi — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:25:12 +0000

Does restarting the vxpa on the host have any (negative) effect on other VMs running on the same host? Thanks.

By: magander3

magander3 — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 19:38:20 +0000

In reply to ivan.

have a look at this one, http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2003638

By: magander3

magander3 — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 19:02:44 +0000

In reply to ivan.

Hi,
at least in vCenter Server 6.0 there is an alarm called “Virtual machine Consolidation Needed status” which you can use. Not sure about vCenter Server 5.x since i don’t have any available.

By: ivan

ivan — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 14:53:02 +0000

I want to set up in vcenter warning followed the action, sending mail, and the command for automatic consolidation drive

By: magander3

magander3 — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 14:15:44 +0000

In reply to ivan. really didn't get that. //Magnus

By: ivan

ivan — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 14:10:34 +0000

how to consolidate the console?

By: dahess

dahess — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 21:31:38 +0000

In reply to PatricF.

like I was saying here some 18 months ago, restarting the vpxa on the host that holds the RO Lock on the base disk (flat-vmdk) will release the lock. No need to reboot the whole ESXi Host.
There are a bunch of VMware KB articles on the issue.
Investigating virtual machine file locks on ESXi/ESX (10051)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/10051
Unable to delete the virtual machine snapshot due to locked files (2017072)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2017072

By: PatricF

PatricF — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 18:59:30 +0000

This saved my life!
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was wrong. I rarely reboot the host and when you wrote that it worked to VMotion the guest it to another host I tried to reboot the server and I could see all the snapshots in Snapshot Manager and remove them all.
This must have happened when I moved the host to another vCenter.
I also read somewhere about just restarting the vpxd service or something like that!? But I never tried it. Figured it was easier to reboot.

By: magander3

magander3 — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 07:04:00 +0000

In reply to Anish Panthalani.

Thanks Anish, i’ll keep that in mind. The unregister and register was not possible initially since we couldn’t shut down the VM.

Thanks
Magnus

By: Anish Panthalani

Anish Panthalani — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 06:14:21 +0000

Thanks for blog post abt this.

I agree with Dahess tip. Similar issue was faced earlier when the VPXA agent restart helps me to solve this. Also a unregister – reregister of VM may helps in this situation.

Thanks,

Anish Panthalani

By: magander3

magander3 — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 18:33:33 +0000

In reply to dahess. Ok, thanks for the tip. i didn't try that one. Unfortunately, everything i found regarding the file lock pointed to the ESXi host where the VM was running. Yes my vCenter Server is a VM //Magnus