Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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rpmahony
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Remove Snapshot stuck at 95… for two days+?! HELP!

Post by rpmahony »

:( I REALLY hope someone can help me with this one…

My Exchange server backup reached 100% on Saturday night but has been stuck removing the snapshot since. I noticed it last night when I realized I hadn't gotten my email notification over the weekend of the successful backup. I stopped the backup job last night by stopping the backup service and killing the agent exes via task manager after reading the suggestion in another post. When I checked the delta file sizes, they appeared to be shrinking, so I thought it was ok to get some sleep (this was at 3am). When I logged in again to check, the sizes had started growing again. (I'm looking at around 20GB of deltas total.) Normally I'd be patient and wait it out but it has never taken longer than 20 minutes to delete snapshots for this VM.

I'm trying not to panic but I'm a little cramped for space on the host (one-host shop here) with just under 300GB free. My google-fu hasn't gotten me anything 'comfortable' to try to fix this issue so I figured I'd ask the community here and at Vmware for a bit of help.

Thanks in advance,
Rusty
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Re: Remove Snapshot stuck at 95… for two days+?! HELP!

Post by Gostev »

Hi, Rusty. Veeam does not manage snapshot removal beyond issuing the API call asking vCenter to do so, and simply waiting for vCenter to report back that the process has been completed (which is why killing the Veeam job makes no difference). If the process did not complete in 2 days, then there is certainly an issue with snapshot removal on ESXi side, so best would be to open a support case with VMware ASAP, especially considering little free disk space available on the host. Thanks!
Berniebgf
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Re: Remove Snapshot stuck at 95… for two days+?! HELP!

Post by Berniebgf »

As long as the process is still running, the VM is still responsive and the Snapshot sizes are moving (working..)I would wait it out, take as much workload off the storage as possible during this time.... Pause Backups and stop un-needed VM's.

If it FAILS, I would turn the VM off (weekend) and clone it to a new one. Line in the sand and move forward.

Once it is done, I would look to check the patch level of the VMware environment. Most of the issues I see are due to older unpatched versions of VMware.

Good Luck!

Bernie
rpmahony
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Re: Remove Snapshot stuck at 95… for two days+?! HELP!

Post by rpmahony »

(Long overdue) Update: I ended up using vConverter to V-to-V my Exchange server to an older ESX host with a cheap NAS connected via iSCSI. It took all weekend but it was successful. I then deleted the original source VM, restarted the host and used vConverter to move it back the following weekend, which took about half the time since there were no snapshots to deal with.

Thanks for the input, all.
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