Monitoring snapshot consolidation process.

This article provides information on how to monitor snapshot consolidation in VMware ESXi hosts. We will be making use of a watch command and also will dig deeper as well. 

 

Reference :-

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1007566

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2146185

 

Sometimes we will have certain situations where we will have to know what the progress with the snapshot consolidation is. Although we can see the progress in the vSphere Client or the Web Client, it just gives you a percentage on the task completed. 

 

In this article, we would be digging a little deeper to understand on which disk is being consolidated at the time and the size of the consolidation left, you would have to get to the console of the ESXi host.

 

Note: This method does not work if the base disks are virtual-mode RDM. You see the read and the delta files touch time, but the time stamps of the RDM pointer file are not updated.

 

First login as root to the ESXi host using SSH. Navigate to the Virtual Machine directory containing the virtual disks associated with the Virtual Machine that is being consolidated.

 

cd /vmfs/volumes/Datastore_name/Virtual_Machine_name/

 

Run the below command to list the content of the directory.

 

ls -lah

 

output :-

 

 

If you have any VM_NAME-00000#.vmdk or VM_NAME-00000#-delta.vmdk files within the directory, that means that the Virtual Machine has snapshots associated with it at this time.

 

To monitor the VMDK snapshot and base disks which are currently being updated, run this watch command:

 

watch -d 'ls -luth | grep -E "delta|flat|sesparse"' 

 

output

 

 

Note :-In ESXi 5.5, if the vmdk is larger than 2 TB, the snapshot file created is of VM_NAME-00000#-sesparse.vmdk format.

  

where: 

-d highlights the differences between successive updates.

t sorts by modification time.

l shows a long listing which displays additional file information.

u sorts by and shows access time.

h prints size in a readable format.

 

By default, the watch command is updated every 2 seconds.

 

Now, the above watch command that we saw is the most commonly used method. There is also another method that we could use which is using the vim-cmd utility.

 

For more detailed monitoring, type these commands to confirm that the consolidation / deletion are active.

 

In an SSH shell session on the ESXI host that is performing the consolidation, snapshot deletion task, run the following Command: 

 

vim-cmd vimsvc/task_list

 

You see a task similar to:

 

vim-cmd vimsvc/task_list

(ManagedObjectReference) [

‘vim.Task:haTask-7-vim.vm.Snapshot.remove-920’ --------This is the task name

]

 

Now that we have the details of the Snapshot which is running, we can now request for more information. 

Type from within the SSH shell : 

 

 

vim-cmd vimsvc/task_info <followed by the task listed from the first command>

 

vim-cmd vimsvc/task_info haTask-7-vim.vm.Snapshot.remove-920

 

The output is going to look like something similar to below:

 

(vim.TaskInfo) {

dynamicType = <unset>,

key = “haTask-7-vim.vm.Snapshot.remove-920”,

task = ‘vim.Task:haTask-7-vim.vm.Snapshot.remove-920’,

description = (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) null,

name = “vim.vm.Snapshot.remove”,

descriptionId = “vm.Snapshot.remove”, --------- Running Process

entity = ‘vim.VirtualMachine:7’,

entityName = “Tiny”, ---------------- Virtual Machine Name

state = “running”, -------------- The status should be in running, not in a error state

cancelled = false,

cancelable = false,

error = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,

result = <unset>,

progress = 99, -- progress of task

reason = (vim.TaskReasonUser) {

dynamicType = <unset>,

userName = “vpxuser”,

},

queueTime = “2016-06-03T07:28:43.607887Z”,

startTime = “2016-06-03T07:28:43.608304Z”,

completeTime = <unset>,

eventChainId = 920,

changeTag = <unset>,

parentTaskKey = <unset>,

rootTaskKey = <unset>,

}