Snapshot operation failure makes VVol based virtual disks inconsistent

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

After snapshot operation fails or you cancel snapshot task, you experience these symptoms:

• Unable to create or delete snapshots.
• Virtual disks remain bounded to snapshot vvol unexpectedly.
• Unable to access data on virtual disks.
• Virtual machine experience inconsistent virtual disk configuration and possibly lose data of one or some of the virtual disks

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

This issue occurs because the snapshot operation fails to roll back when the virtual disks are located in multiple VVol datastores.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 3, available at VMware Downloads.

To work around to this issue if you do not want to upgrade, store all the virtual disks on the same datastore where virtual machine is located.