Missing orphaned disks in vRealize Operations Manager 7.5

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Orphaned disks are not reported in vRealize Operations Manager 7.5.

Environment

VMware vRealize Operations Manager 7.5.x

Cause

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 take a conservative approach to orphaned disks.
There could be files that are actually orphaned but not reported.

Possible reasons for an unreported orphaned disk include, but are not limited to:

• Misconfiguration of the datastores, such as not adhering to iSCSI naming conventions
• Disposable Disks from Linked-Clones

Resolution

If you believe you have an orphaned disk file and it is not reported, follow the options below to verify.

Misconfiguration of the datastores

Validate the Identifier 4 value on the suspected object.

1. Log into the vRealize Operations Manager UI as an administrator with access to all objects.
2. Navigate to Administration > Inventory.
3. Select Object Types > Datastore on the left to filter for all Datastores.
4. Click the Show Columns button at the bottom of the List pane.
5. Check Identifier 4 and click OK to enable the Identifier 4 column.
6. Find the suspected datastore name and note the Identifier 4 value, or right-click the value and select Copy Cell.
7. Filter for the Identifier 4 value found in step 6.
8. If the Identifier 4 value matches with value of other datastores, then they are treated as shared and the disk is not reported as orphaned.

Note: If different datastores have the same Identifier 4, this is typically due to the datastores being improperly configured, such as a violation of iSCSI naming conventions where the IQN or EUI are the same.
 

Disposable Disks from Linked-Clones

Each linked clone VM has 2 disposable disks.
The disks are stored in following folders on the datastore and can be viewed from vCenter:

• vm_name/*disposable*.vmdk
• vm_name/sdd/*disposable*.vmdk

The vm_name/sdd/*disposable*.vmdk disk is the original disposable disk when the VM is created. It gets copied to the first location whenever a refresh/recompose operation is invoked.
Since this disk is not visible from the VM perspective, and only visible from the datastore, vRealize Operations Manager would identify it as orphaned.
To avoid this behavior, those files matching the pattern vm_name/sdd/*disposable*.vmdk will always be skipped regardless if they are actually orphaned or not.

Additional Information

See iSCSI Naming Conventions for more information on possible causes on iSCSI storage.