VMware Aria Operations is reporting the orphaned virtual disks.

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

• VMware Aria Operations console lists several orphaned disks that require manual cleanup.

In VMware Aria Operations > Dashboards > All , it can be seen that there is "Reclaimable - Orphaned Disk"

 

 

 

• VMware Aria Operations may not allow direct deletion of these orphaned disks to prevent any accidental data loss.

Environment

VMware Aria Operations 8.x

VMware vSAN (All Versions)

Cause

Orphaned disks or VMDKs  part of the vSAN datastore that are not connected to any registered VMs and have not been modified during a defined period of time, are detected as orphaned by VMware Aria Operations.

Resolution

VMware Aria Operations identifies these orphaned disks to prevent accidental data loss. Because of this, the platform does not allow direct deletion from the Aria interface.

 

To remove the orphaned disk entry entry from ARIA ops, Manual validation needs to be performed before removing the orphaned disks through vCenter following the below steps.

• Export the list: In Aria Operations, go to Capacity > Reclaim, select your datacenter, click on Orphaned Disks, and select Export All to get the list of affected VMDKs.

• Open the vSphere Client and navigate to the datastore browser for the vSAN datastore. Locate the files identified in the exported list.

• Confirm Usage of the orphaned disks before deletion, ensure these disks are not attached to renamed VMs, templates, or clones that may be unregistered but still required.

• Check for Unregistered VMs: Ensure the VMDK is not part of a VM that has been temporarily removed from the vCenter inventory (but is slated to be re-registered).

• Verify Clones and Templates: Check if the VMDK is associated with a linked clone, a template, that might be holding onto the disk.

• Check for Renamed VMs: Sometimes a VM is renamed in the vCenter UI, but its underlying folder and VMDK files retain the old name. Search vCenter for the disk's base name to ensure it isn't actively attached to a differently named VM.

• Validate the objects which are pointing to the orphaned disks and checked the status. by running the command "esxcli vsan debug object list -u objUUID".

Once the above validations checks are been performed against the orphaned disk , Then navigate to the vSphere Client > Storage > select > vSAN datastore, and click the Files tab. Locate the orphaned VM disk folder, check the box next to the unused .vmdk files, and click Delete to permanently remove them.

Allow sometime (24 hours) for Aria Operations to complete its next collection cycle to clear the alerts and reflect the updated capacity.

Additional Information

Orphaned disks in the datastore using VMware Aria Operations in order to reclaim space.