Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of erudit
eruditFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

asked on

Vmware Parent CID Mismatch

Good Evening All,

I have a ESX 5 with sbs 2011 in a VM, they filled there datastore and the sbs instance crashed, after releasing some space on the datastore the server would no longer boot, i attempted to create a second instance with the drives attached but wrongly booted there master VM and now it comes up with parent has been modified since the child was created.

The end client only has a backup of the master vmdk file back in october if this master file is restored will the PID match?

Any help appreciated.
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

I think the scenario, would have been your virtual machine was running on a child/snapshot virtual disk, which filled on the datastore, and the VM stopped working. (which is normal, if you do not perform any Watering and Feeding of VMs, and daily checks for snapshots!)

You then added this parent virtual disk, incorrectly to a VM, and powered on!

without the child snapshot disk being included with the parent, your VM would have been started, and you would have lost or reverted data, or the OS would have been corrupted.

What function does the VM have ?

Do you have the snapshots ?

these were not deleted ?

please see my EE Article

HOW TO: VMware Snapshots :- Be Patient

It's quite straightforward to fix, and match CID, see this article

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1007969
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

The client used vaeem several months ago, hence the october backup

the snapshot that was working is sbs2011-2-000002
the master file is sbs2011

there are no snapshots in snapshot manager.

Restoring the original master to the datastore that the snapshot was using wont fix the issue?
okay, I can work with you to solve the issue.

can you screenshot the VM folder, and upload for me to have a look at.
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

Data folder As Per Below
DatastoreFolder.png
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

So do i access this via SSH then use VI to edit a file? which files would i edit?
Do you have any experience of SSH or VI ?

because there is a simpler method....for the newbie...
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

Using VI i have created this file with the ID's

Can you tell me what theese should be changed to ?
ID.xlsx
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

I have a basic knowledge of VI if there is a simpler method that would be great.
I would recommend the use of WinSCP, from Windows, you can then edit, like with notepad, you just need to enable SSH, and can browse and alter the files you need to alter.

which will be the vmdk file descriptors

the CIDS must match all the way through the chain, e.g. snapshot2 matches it's parent, which is snapshot1, and snapshot1 must match the parent.
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

Please see attached List of ID's, is this how it should be?

and once theese are changed which vmdk files do i attach to the VM the Files ending 000002?

Regards
Matt
ID2.xlsx
Avatar of erudit

ASKER

Changed Parent ID's on the Snapshots and now boots up correctly.


Absolutley Briliant, Thankyou very much

Whats the best way to optimize the virtual machines? as they are using a lot of space?
You will need to reduce the sizes of the virtual disks (vmdks), and this can only be done using VMware Converter, and create a V2V.

My EE Article shows you how with step by step instructions, with screenshots

Part 13: HOW TO: Shrink or Reduce a VMware Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone v5.5.2

Don't forget to handle the snapshots as well.
Okay, if you still have VMs, running on a snapshot....you can confirm by reviewing my EE Article

1. Take a new Snapshot of the VM
2. Wait 60 seconds
3. select DELETE ALL in Snapshot Manager
4. WAIT and BE VERY PATIENT

for the process to complete.