Home32 vmware snapshots debacle
So I was having some pretty significant performance problems with a vm running Windows Server 2003. I thought it might be due to the fact that I had so many snapshots. Fellow ESX admins over at the VMWare communities confirmed this to be the case.
So my next step would be to combine all the snapshots and get rid of my delta’s by committing them all. I was going to run some guest updates first, so I again as always, made a snapshot. Something either guest or host related happened and the guest powered off. When I went to turn it back on VI complained:
too many levels of redo logs
uh oh! the guest wouldn’t turn on! it turns out that this snapshot was in fact the 35th snapshot taken for this machine. This 35th snapshot didnt complete correctly and was corrupted. it also turns out there is a 32 snapshot limit for VM guests. Good to know VI tells you about this! <sarcasm included>
After frantically searching the web and forums for a solutions someone pointed me in the direction of a post here: http://zealkabi.blogspot.com/2008/10/virtualcenter-shows-no-snapshot-but-it.html which clearly shows the process i need to use to commit my snapshots, specifically Solution B:
If solution A did not work then next step to follow is: use vmkfstools -i to consolidate snapshots.
1. You can export the disk with vmkfstools to recreate the virtual machine:
2. Execute the following command to create a directory for the new disk:\
# mkdir /vmfs/volumes/UUID/new_RHEL5
3. Execute the following command to point vmkfstools at the last snapshot file:
# vmkfstools -i RHEL5-000001.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/UUID/new_RHEL5/new_RHEL5.vmdk
Three hours later, snapshots 32 through 1 committed and a single vmdk. While this commit process was running I realized i could have simply told VI to run vmdisk00032.vmdk instead of the final (and corrupt) vmdisk00035.vmdk. this would have been the quick resolution to get me back up and running, and I could have don the snapshot committal at a better time.
Huge thanks to patrickds from the VMWare communities and SANJAT KABI (http://zealkabi.blogspot.com) for their knowledge!
