A command to monitor snapshots merging via vcli

Have you been annoyed like me looking at snapshots getting merged and the progress in task list pane shows 99% but not doing anything?

I have been... I even raised a ticket with VMware to let me know if its actually getting merged.

One of the GSS support engineer helped me in getting some visibility of the snapshot merging.

SSH to one of the host.

Browse to the relevant datastore and into the virtual machine folder where the vm resides

cd /vmfs/volumes/<vm folder>

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

That will help keep monitoring the delta disks getting merged to the flat files. 

vim-cmd vimsvc/task_list

This command outputs there is a removeallsnapshot task running.

# vim-cmd vimsvc/task_info haTask-x-vim.VirtualMachine.removeAllSnapshots-xxxxxxxx

With this output make sure your actual task is in running state

(vim.TaskInfo) {

dynamicType = <unset>,

key = "haTask-x-vim.VirtualMachine.removeAllSnapshots-xxxxxxxxx",

task = 'vim.Task:haTask-x-vim.VirtualMachine.removeAllSnapshots-xxxxxxxx',

description = (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) null,

name = "vim.VirtualMachine.removeAllSnapshots",

descriptionId = "VirtualMachine.removeAllSnapshots", à <running process>

entity = 'vim.VirtualMachine:9', <---VIM ID>

entityName = "<vm name>",   à <Virtual Machine name>

state = "running",    à  <make sure the status is running & is not in a error state>

cancelled = false,

cancelable = false,

error = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,

result = <unset>,

progress = 99,  à  <progress of task>

reason = (vim.TaskReasonUser) {

dynamicType = <unset>,

userName = "root",

},

queueTime = "2013-10-02T07:22:02.224526Z",

startTime = "2013-10-02T07:22:02.225526Z",

completeTime = <unset>,

eventChainId = 304060994,

changeTag = <unset>,

parentTaskKey = <unset>,

rootTaskKey = <unset>,

}

In my case the progress was on 99% for a long time

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1007566