Unremoved snapshots after hard failure of the backup server

[fconil]

Hi,

Our backup server running Veeam 4.1.1 just BSOD, leaving 4 VMs with "unremovable" snapshots.

I tried to remove the snapshots in vcenter and got the "file is locked" error (Unable to access a file since it is locked).

I read the threads about consolidate helper, and turned off the VM and tried to create/delete a new snapshot. It only recreate an incremental vmdisk-0000x.vmdk file and do not delete any of the snapshots.

Any ideas?

[fconil]

More on this.

I tried to stop the vm, take a snapshot and delete all, but it would just add an increment to the delta files (0007->0008, etc).

I finally tried something else.

I turned off the veeam server. (no jobs running, all jobs set to disabled to avoid adding to the mess tomorrow)
Turned off my vm.
Created a bogus snapshot.
Clicked on delete all.
Waited for the process to finish (did it straight from esx, not vcenter as the vcenter progress bar is an approximation at best)
Restarted the VM with no problems.

[Gostev]

Yes, this is correct way to remove invisible snapshots.
Are you using Virtual Appliance processing mode?

[fconil]

San with network failover.

[cmcc82]

So, the only way for this to work is to power off the Veeam Server?
I'm having the same case, too many Consolidate-helper-0 at the Snapshot manager... I'm scared of remove all...

[Vitaliy S.]

I haven't seen any issues with deleting Consolidate-helper snapshots. Once you do it, you should investigate why you have so many snapshots created...