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My guest has snapshot files in use - but no snapshots reported
My guest has snapshot files in use - but no snapshots reported
- Hi,
I've got something strange going on with a guest on one of my Hyper-V 2008R2 hosts
The guest has four disks, one (the system/boot) on the first IDE controller, and tree more data disks on the first SCSI controller.
All of the disks have active snatshot files (.avhd) attached to the vhd's - but the Hyper-V manager says that the guest has no snapshots - and none have ever been created on this guest?
I've tried copying all (both vhs and avhds) to another host and configured a new guest up using the disk (in same order) - but the new guest didn't load the avhd's, coursing the guest to go way back in time.
How do I merge the snapshots back when the manager says that no snapshots exists (but they do) ??
Answers
- Hi Brian,
You have no way to know this, but Staun and SorenJorgensen is one and same person :-)
I just didn't pay attention when logging into the forum and picked my other live account
I waited for a little over tree hours for the merging to begin, and then decided to do it manually
Waiting a day was not an option as the guest was about to be moved to another host.
Being a programmer I recently created a small utility dll, to explore vhd files - so running this on the avhd's (and looking at last write time) I was pretty sure what avhd's was belonging to what vhd's
The server is up and running on the new host, and seems to be good - so no worries (for now)- Marked As Answer byVincent HuMSFT, ModeratorMonday, November 23, 2009 8:31 AM
All Replies
- If the snapshots are deleted they are removed from the Hyper-V manager, however their virtual disks still exist.
The only way to cause the virtual disks to merge together is to power off (not save, not pause) the VM and wait, sometimes very patiently.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) - what's very patiently; minutes, hours or days??
I've had the guest turned off for about an hour now, still nothing merged - Well - seems my patience isn't that long.
I manually merged the snapshots back into the parent disks using the disk editor tool, then created a new VM and attached the merged disks to that.
So problem solved - The merging status only shows up in the Hyper-V manager (and it displays far right in the center pane so it is easy to miss)
Staun mentions an interesting point. You can use the disk editor tool to do a couple things -
1) see if a child VHD has a valid parent VHD.
2) Merge the children (AVHDs) with their parents (could be VHD or AVHD)
The time that it takes to merge depends on how long the snapshot existed before it was deleted and how much change was written to the disk during that time.
If it was a day or two it should be relatively quick.
If it was months then yes, it could be hours.
And, You are positive that these AVHDs a really part of a disk chain. Not some abandoned historic VM that was not deleted properly through the Manager (then you should only have a VHD left over).
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful) - Hi Brian,
You have no way to know this, but Staun and SorenJorgensen is one and same person :-)
I just didn't pay attention when logging into the forum and picked my other live account
I waited for a little over tree hours for the merging to begin, and then decided to do it manually
Waiting a day was not an option as the guest was about to be moved to another host.
Being a programmer I recently created a small utility dll, to explore vhd files - so running this on the avhd's (and looking at last write time) I was pretty sure what avhd's was belonging to what vhd's
The server is up and running on the new host, and seems to be good - so no worries (for now)- Marked As Answer byVincent HuMSFT, ModeratorMonday, November 23, 2009 8:31 AM
- Sneaky... very sneaky.
Don't worry, I have two live accounts as well - I totally understand.
Yes, the wait time can be very annoying - and I have seen folks that build a VM, take a snapshot, install their software and then decide to delete the snapshot and then just move ahead, never powering off the VM.
There was one that went for months with an Exchange server in this state. You can image the panic the one day they powered it off and the merge began. Yes, it was over 24 hours.
Glad you arived at a solution.
Trust me, I can appreciate your impatience.
Brian Ehlert (hopefully you have found this useful)
