The message "Virtual Machine Consolidation Needed" appears for a specific virtual machine in the vSphere Client.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• When you select a specific virtual machine in the vSphere Client, the following message appears in the "Issues and Alarms" section of the "Summary" tab:

Virtual machine consolidation needed status
Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed.

• When you select the "Snapshots" tab, the following message appears at the top of the screen:
  Consolidation is required

Environment

vSphere 7.0

vSphere 8.0

Cause

This message is issued when an inconsistency occurs between the snapshot manager's perception and the actual state of the snapshot files on the datastore.

Resolution

Please consolidate your snapshots by following the steps in the document below.

Consolidate Snapshots

Additional Information

If snapshot consolidation fails, the following may be the cause:

• There is not enough free space on the datastore to perform the consolidation. The VM disk resides on a datastore with less than 1 GB of available space.
• A third-party backup application has locked the snapshot file and the snapshot could not be deleted after the backup was completed, or the backup could not be started.
• There is an issue with the connection between the vCenter Server and the ESXi host.
• You have exceeded the number of snapshots recommended by VMware. Best practices recommend a maximum of 32 snapshots for a guest VM.

Please also refer to the following KB article when implementing the consolidation.

Consolidating/Committing snapshots in VMware ESXi