Can't consolidate disks on VBR Proxy - #04247473

[ben_shaw]

Hi, I am using a Windows 10 VM as a proxy and repository. Its running version 9.5.4.2866. The BR proxy has its OS disk on an ESXi host and repository disk on a FreeNAS server which is mapped to the ESXi host via iSCSI. Things were mostly working well but I noticed recently that vSphere was alerting that the BR proxy needs its disk consolidated. Specifically, the repository disk stored on FreeNAS requires consolidation and has dozens of .ctk and .sesparse files like shown below.

-rw------- 1 root root 5.0M Jun 24 00:11 DC1-VEAM01_1-000007-ctk.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 183.4G Jun 24 00:11 DC1-VEAM01_1-000007-sesparse.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 446 Jun 6

I have been using Veeam to replicate the VBR proxy to a different ESXi host but excluding the repository disk, only replicating the OS disk. Recently, I have started seeing issues in the replication job log that say "DC1-VEAM01 has stuck VM snapshot, will attempt to consolidate periodically" which seems to be related to the disk consolidation messages mentioned above. I am not 100% this is a VBR issue but it does seem to be related to the snapshots being created to perform the replications.

This issue seemed to start happening after a failed replication job. I can see in the VBR logs that the last replication job that ran before the messages above started appearing failed with the message: "Processing DC1-VEAM01 Error: The remote server returned an error: (503) Server Unavailable" All replication jobs after that started having issues deleting the snapshots of the DC1-VEAM01 host whereas before this there were no issues.

I have tried to consolidate the disk which failed. I created a manual snaphsot (none were showing as existing in vSphere) to then be able to "Delete All' snapshots, but this failed again. Can anyone suggest a way to try and resolve this? Thanks.

[Egor Yakovlev]

- Make sure no jobs are running and check Proxy VM configuration for stale mounted disks of protected VMs that weren't removed automatically after backup(hot-add disks).
- Remove them from Proxy VM configuration(NOT from Disk!).
- Shutdown proxy and try manual consolidation again.
/Thanks!

[ben_shaw]

Thanks, I don't see any other disks attached when I look at the configuration for the VBR VM. I only see the OS and repository disk. The repository disk is is pointing to a snapshot VMDK and this seems to the disk that needs consolidation.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Worth to give a shot to Storage vMotion that disk to another datastore and back, however since it is a VMware problem we are playing a guessing game here - maybe it will be best to ask the same on VMware forums?
/Thanks!