How to identify Zombie / Orphaned disks in the datastore in Aria Operations in order to reclaim space.

Products

• VMware Aria Suite
• VMware Aria Operations 8.x
• VMware Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations) 8.x

Issue/Introduction

• The article talks about identifying 'Missing / Orphaned disks' using Aria Operation.
• We want to leverage Aria Operations to identify Orphaned disks. though there are no Metrics that talks about Orphaned disks.

Environment

Aria Operations 8.x

Resolution

• Refer to the Reclaim section in Aria Operation to get the details of Orphaned VMDKs.
• Tabular representation of the VMs, Idle VMs, Snapshots, and Orphaned disks in the selected data center from which resources can be reclaimed.

• VMware Aria Operations reports orphaned VMDKs conservatively.

Note: There might be a false positive situation when the used VMDK is reported as orphaned, particularly if the VMDK is located on a datastore which is shared among multiple VCs, while not all the VCs are monitored by VMware Aria Operations .

• Check the accuracy of the VMDK reported as an orphaned disk, and then perform a reclamation.

 

For Orphaned Disks:

• EXCLUDE DISK(S): Exclude the selected disks in the actionable list.
• EXPORT ALL: Exports the list of orphaned disks into a CSV file. You cannot reclaim orphaned disks from the UI. Instead, export the list into a CSV file and then reclaim the orphaned disks manually.SHOW|HIDE EXCLUDED DISKS: Toggle displays or hides the list of disks you previously excluded. Excluded disks are not listed in the exported CSV file.

Additional Information

• There are no any metrics currently available in the system by which we can identify that the disk is orphaned.
• The analytics engine does a periodic call to vCenter adapter, and vCenter adapter returns the list of potentially orphaned disks.