VMs Stuck in Disk Consolidation Loop

[SBMtmiller]

We are on vSphere Client version 6.5. We have a site with 3 ESXi servers that are very old and we use Commvault for backups. Well Commvault seems to be causing the VMs to crash and now a few are stuck in an endless loop of disk consolidation. The servers are not operational and right clicking them all the options are grayed out. Any suggestions?

[a_p_]

The screenshot that you've attached is not really helpful.

Anyway, please explain "...endless loop of disk consolidation ...".
Is this consolidation triggered by the backup application?
Can you confirm that you are not low on disk space on the datastore (which often results in similar issues)?

André

[SBMtmiller]

I am not a vmware admin so please excuse my stumbling through this. There appears to be enough space on the ESXi hosts as well as the datastore of each of the 3 problem VMs. I see the backup account trying to consolidate the disks under the recent tasks, progress will get like 50-83% done then fail. Then it will try again later with the same results. 

[a_p_]

To me this sounds as if on of the VM's files is locked, i.e. the backup process still has a file in use (e.g. a hot-added .vmdk on a backup server/proxy). That's something you may want to verify.

When the process fails, does it show an error message in Tasks/Events that may help to find out what's causing the issue?

André

[SBMtmiller]

I stopped backups from running and disabled the schedule. It was set to run once a day but the hardware is so old I think it cant handle backups anymore. Should I cancel the consolidation attempt and try to do it manually?

[a_p_]

Please provide the complete error message for unable to close the 'vmfs/volumes/..

André

[SBMtmiller · Accepted solution]

Hello and thanks for trying to help with this. We just let VMware keep trying after stopping the backups from running and it appears VMware eventually resolved the issue on its own. Basically the hardware is very old and running backups appears to be too much for the ESX servers. The memory and CPU max out and causes all sorts of problems. So I guess we will just have to keep backups off for now.