Cannot resolve "Consolidation disk needed" event.

[Tuteks]

Hello,

during snapshots deletion I get an error "Virtual machine Consolidation Needed status" so I did in snapshots disk consolidation and this process have status "Completed successfully", but this error do not go away. Now for this VM there is no any snapshots available in the snapshot manager and this problem persists all the time. Could you help me resolve this problem, thank you?

Vcenter version is 7.0.3 

[ptarnawski]

Hey @Tuteks ,

Check few thing: 

1.  Ensure there is enough free space on the datastore where the virtual machine resides. Insufficient space can sometimes cause issues with snapshot consolidation

2. Using the ESXi command line, you can try to manually consolidate the snapshots using commands like vmkfstools.

3. Even if no snapshots are showing, try to consolidate again. Right-click the VM, go to Snapshot, and select Consolidate.

[evandroEcruz]

Good afternoon, is there a disk consolidation option in the VM properties? try to keep double space of the disk that will be consolidated, consolidation will make a comparison between disks and space is an important thing. If the disk is thin provisioned, check the file size after the process is complete, the file is usually large, if this happens, you will need to shrink it.

[Tuteks]

Hello,

@ptarnawski 

1. the datastore have 1.62TB and free is 243GB

3. I have already done the consolidation three times, but still have yellow warning on this VM regarding this issue.

[Tuteks]

@evandroEcruz 

Disk for this VM have 300GB thin provision and the free space is 243GB - maybe here is the problem

[evandroEcruz]

na mensagem anterior você mencionou 1,62TB, em resposta a minha mensagem você disse 300GB, acredito que seu disco tenha aproximadamente 550GB a 600GB, devido ao processo de consolidação ele deixou o arquivo VMDK com 1,62TB?

Verifique também se você tem apenas um arquivo VMDK; em caso afirmativo, eu faria:

Eu encolheria o disco (se a VM não tiver o mvwaretools instalado, é uma boa ideia instalá-lo), desfragmentaria o disco e veria se o arquivo VMDK ainda é grande, se no final de tudo acabar com o Arquivo VMDK em tamanho normal e apenas um arquivo, eu limparia o alerta de consolidação

[pcgeek2009]

I have seen issues where a backup product that takes snapshots keeps a lock on a file from a previous backup. This keeps the disk from correctly consolidating. This was what I experienced when I used Avamar and had to find the proxy it was attached to and remove it. If you have another datastore, do a storage migration. I have also seen a rouge snapshot cause this error. If you are able to do a storage vmotion to another datastore, it will leave the old snapshot behind in a folder you would just need to delete.