Virtual Machine Folders

[jvillanuevamtz]

Hello;

  Just noticed that in my datastore there are multiple folders of a single virtual machine, for example VM-Marketing it has also VM-Marketing_1 and VM-Marketing_2.

  When I go to the "Edit Settings" of this VM, in the Hardware tab and in the Hard disk it's going to [datastore]VM-Marketing_2/VM-Marketing.vmdk.

   Then in the General Options in the "Options" tab, the VM Configuration tab it's [datastore]VM-Marketing_2/VM-Marketing.vmx

   It seems that my VM it's working in the VM-Marketing_2 folder in the datastore, what about the other two ?, this VM it's quite heavy it has a 80 GB HDD and if I have 3 of them it's 240 GB total, so can i delete them?, is there something I can do atin the VCenter??

  Here is the contents of this folders:

VM-Marketing/

-rw------- 1 root root  80G Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing-flat.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 8.5K Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.nvram

-rw------- 1 root root  480 Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root    0 Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.1K Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmx

-rw------- 1 root root  268 Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmxf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  85K Oct 11  2010 vmware.log

VM-Marketing_1/

-rw------- 1 root root  80G Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing-flat.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 8.5K Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.nvram

-rw------- 1 root root  480 Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root    0 Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.0K Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmx

-rw------- 1 root root  268 Oct 11  2010 VM-Marketing.vmxf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  70K Oct 11  2010 vmware-1.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  73K Oct 11  2010 vmware-2.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  73K Oct 11  2010 vmware.log

VM-Marketing_2/

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   37 Sep 17 12:37 VM-Marketing-4db56dd6.hlog

-rw------- 1 root root 6.0G Sep 19 08:16 VM-Marketing-4db56dd6.vswp

-rw------- 1 root root 5.1M Sep 19 08:16 VM-Marketing-ctk.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root  80G Sep 19 13:59 VM-Marketing-flat.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 8.5K Sep 19 08:17 VM-Marketing.nvram

-rw------- 1 root root  568 Sep 19 08:17 VM-Marketing.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 1.4K Sep 13 07:27 VM-Marketing.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.4K Sep 19 13:19 VM-Marketing.vmx

-rw------- 1 root root  268 Sep 19 13:19 VM-Marketing.vmxf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 245K Sep  7 08:52 vmware-20.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 155K Sep 17 12:32 vmware-21.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 133K Sep 17 12:37 vmware-22.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 128K Sep 19 07:52 vmware-23.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  61K Sep 19 07:56 vmware-24.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  61K Sep 19 07:58 vmware-25.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  90K Sep 19 13:20 vmware.log

Thanks for your time...

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community - When a VM is created ESX it will utilize the Machine Name by default as the name of directory where the VM and its files will be stored - if a directory by that name already exists it will increment the directory with the _1, _2 etc - so I am betting VMs by the same na,e were created prior to the one you currently have in production - perhaps the intent had been to delete those VMs but when they were deleted rather than selecting Delete From Disk - Delete From Inventory was selected which will maintain the directory structure -

[a_p_]

This looks like the VM-Marketing folder has been copied into VM-Marketing_1 and VM-Marketing_2 on Oct, 11th 2010, but then only VM-Marketing_2 has been used. IMO you can delete the folders with the old files. To be save, rename the 2 folders and - if no issues occur in the next few days - delete the renamed folders. To get an overview of the VM's and the associated files you can use e.g. http://www.robware.net/

André

[jvillanuevamtz]

Hi, and thanks for your response

In your point of view, do you think that if I delete this files I would have a problem with my VM ?, the directory of the vmdk (Hard Disk) and the configuration file are pointing to the VM-Marketing_2/ folder, so it suppose to be no problem, right????

[chriswahl]

Should be fine to delete the old folders. Might want to back it up first for a while just in case.

I don't think renaming the folder will do anything until the VM is restarted so it's probably a bad test.

As a test I renamed the folder of a running lab VM and it ran fine until I tried to restart it.