When starting a virtual machine or while creating/consolidating a snapshot of a virtual machine that is already powered on, you see this warning:

This virtual machine has more than 100 redo logs in a single branch of its snapshot tree. Deleting some of the snapshots or consolidating the redo logs will improve performance. The maximum number of redo logs supported is 255.

1. Consolidate all the snapshots. For more information, see Committing snapshots in vSphere when more than 32 levels of snapshots are present fails with the error: Too many levels of redo logs (1004545).
2. If the issue still persists, remove the remaining delta files after powering off the virtual machine by using the steps below:
   

1. Open an SSH session to the host where the virtual machine resides.

   For more information, see Connecting to an ESX host using an SSH client (1019852).
   

2. Navigate to the virtual machine with this command:

   cd /vmfs/volumes/MY_DATASTORE/

   In the example listed here the sample output is:

   /vmfs/volumes/502d9929-1a090052-4fca-00505617366e/vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)/
   

3. Enter this command:

   ls -l | grep 00000*
   

   This comand lists the contents of the delta files for this virtual machine. If the consolidation had remaining delta files they are represented as:

   
   -rw------- 1 root root 8192 Aug 19 14:52 vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)-000001-delta.vmdk

   -rw------- 1 root root 370 Aug 19 14:52 vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)-000001.vmdk

   -rw------- 1 root root 8192 Aug 19 14:52 vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)-000002-delta.vmdk

   -rw------- 1 root root 377 Aug 19 14:52 vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)-000002.vmdk
   

   Note: If the consolidation task has been completed these files can be removed with the rm filename command.

   Note: A recommendation is to create a folder in the virtual machine folder called tmp and instead of permanently deleting these files, use the move command in the next step.
   
   
4. Run this command:
   
   
   mv *delta.vmdk tmp && mv *00000* tmp

   
   Note: By moving the files to a sub-directory you can power on the virtual machine and test for any failures. If everything is working as intended you can remove the folder by using the rm -rf tmp command.
   
   If issues arise, power down the virtual machine if it is powered on.

5. Run this command to put the virtual machine back in its original directory.

   cd tmp && mv * ../

6. To confirm there are no delta files left in the tmp folder, run this command:
   
   

   ls -l
   
   In the tmp folder, if there are no delta files or there are matching descriptors, you can remove the tmp folder with the rm -rf tmp command.

7. If your consolidation task did not complete successfully do not delete these files, as it corrupts the snapshot chain and possibly lead to data loss.

Notes:

• For more information on locked files that can result in similar errors, see Unable to delete the virtual machine snapshot due to locked files (2017072).
• For more information to repair and validate the snapshot chain, see Recreating a missing virtual machine disk (VMDK) descriptor file (1002511).
• If the virtual machine is powered on, the host tries to take a helper snapshot during the consolidation which results in the same error.
• For more information on consolidating the snapshots, see Consolidating snapshots in VMware Fusion (1020000).
• Though this article is specific to Fusion, you can use the procedures to consolidate the snapshots in ESX/ESXi also.