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Attempts to consolidate vmdks after removing snapshots fails with error: Failed to consolidate after removing snapshots: Argument list too long (2002960)

Symptoms

When a snapshot is deleted, it leaves a vmdk delta and prevents further consolidation attempts. Because of a faulty snapshot, the consolidation the vmdks of a virtual machine fails with this error: 
 
Failed to consoldiate after removing snapshots: Argument list too long.



700193

Cause

There are two possible causes for this issue: 
  • Too many snapshots are being consolidated at once, or VMware vCenter Server has an incorrect view of the number of snapshots.
  • Delta vmdk may be corrupted. In case the delta disk creation succeeded (but the consolidation errors are being faced), it is possible that the data was written to cache only. When the flush to the disk is attempted, it may fail because the required amount of space is not available on the datastore.

Resolution

There are several possible reasons resulting in an incorrect view of the number of snapshots.
 
To resolve this issue:
  • If the delta vmdk is corrupt, manually remove the snapshot for the delta files to revert the virtual machine to the state it had before the snapshot was created.
  • As the virtual machine is not powered on, any delta after the corrupted disk will not contain data. However, you must point the disk in the vmx to the base disk and change the snapshot entry in the vmsd file (if it exists).
 

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