Verifying the integrity of Fusion parent virtual disks

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article describes how to correct a modified parent disk.

Symptoms:

• Cannot power on the virtual machine
• You see one of these error messages:
• • The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created
  • The parent of this virtual disk could not be opened

Environment

VMware Fusion 6.x
VMware Fusion 4.x
VMware Fusion 3.x
VMware Fusion 2.x
VMware Fusion 7.x
VMware Fusion 5.x

Resolution

This issue occurs if the virtual machine has a snapshot and if a parent disk has been modified. When you boot a virtual machine, it tries to boots from the snapshot. Modifying the parent virtual disk invalidates the snapshot and causes the virtual machine to stop functioning.

 

Note: A snapshot is neither a backup nor a full virtual disk. It only maintains a record of incremental changes since the time it is created. Any changes made to a parent disk or to an earlier snapshot indicates that the changes recorded in this snapshot are no longer valid. This leads to loss of data created or modified after the snapshot was taken. For general information about snapshots, see Understanding Snapshots and AutoProtect in VMware Fusion (1014509).

 

To resolve this issue, you must either restore the virtual machine partially or fully from a backup or remove the snapshot.

 

To restore the virtual machine from a backup or to remove the snapshots, try one or more of the following options:

 

Notes:

• These steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to minimize data loss. After each step, try powering on the virtual machine again.
• For information on locating virtual disk files, see Locating the virtual machine bundle in VMware Fusion (1007599).

 

1. Restore the parent virtual disk files from a backup that was taken when the virtual machine was functional. To identify the parent virtual disk files, see Contents of the virtual machine bundle in Fusion (1021016).
    
2. Restore all virtual machine files from a backup that was taken when the virtual machine was functional.
   
   Note: Restoring virtual machine files results in loss of data modified after the backup was taken.
    
3. Remove the snapshot from the virtual machine.
   
   Note: Removing the snapshot results in loss of data modified after the snapshot was taken.
   
   To remove the snapshot and to restore the virtual machine to working order:
4. 1. Delete all files and folders with the following extensions from the virtual machine bundle:
       
      • .vmsn
      • .vmsd
      • .vmss
      • .lck
         
   2. Delete all snapshot virtual disk files from the virtual machine bundle. For details on snapshot virtual disk files, see Contents of the virtual machine bundle in Fusion (1021016).
       
   3. Edit the virtual machine's configuration (.vmx) file and change all references to snapshot disks to the parent disk. Specifically, look for entries that include 00000<x>.vmdk, where <x> is a number, and delete 00000<x>.vmdk. Leave the rest of the entry intact. For details, see Editing the .vmx file for your Fusion virtual machine (1014782).
       
   4. Save the .vmx file. The virtual machine powers on using only the parent virtual disk.