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Committing Dynamically Added .REDO Logs after Virtual Machine Crashes or Is Forcefully Terminated

Details

A virtual machine has disks with .REDO logs added while it was running (dynamically added .REDO logs).

The virtual machine later crashed or was killed (not powered off). How do I commit the .REDO logs in this situation?

Solution

Before powering on the virtual machine, you must use vmkfstools to commit the dynamically added .REDO logs. If you don't use vmkfstools to first commit each dynamically added .REDO log, its contents may be lost.

Note: This problem does not affect the .REDO logs that are automatically added to disks in nonpersistent, undoable or append mode.

To use vmkfstools to apply the dynamically added .REDO logs to a virtual disk:

  1. Log onto the service console as root.

  2. Identify the .REDO logs associated with the affected virtual disk:
    ls /vmfs/VMFSVolName/My-VM.dsk*

    /vmfs/VMFSVolName/My-VM.dsk
    /vmfs/VMFSVolName/My-VM.dsk.REDO

  3. Run vmkfstools to commit the .REDO log to the parent disk:
    vmkfstools --commit /vmfs/VMFSVolName/My-VM.dsk.REDO

    This will commit My-VM.dsk.REDO to its parent disk.
    Commit it (y/n) ? y
  4. Confirm that vmkfstools successfully committed and deleted the .REDO log:
    ls /vmfs/VMFSVolName/My-VM.dsk*

    /vmfs/VMFSVolName/My-VM.dsk

When all dynamically added .REDO logs have been committed, the virtual machine is ready to power on.

Prior to starting a crashed or forcibly terminated virtual machine, you must use vmkfstools to commit dynamically added .REDO logs; if you do not, their contents become unrecoverable.

Keywords

1473; 54730; vmware-cmd; vmfstool

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