Vmware Server Console crashes when removing snapshot

Mountain Biking Group

Tonight while doing maintenance on one of my virtual machines I decided it was time to remove a snapshot I created a few days ago while upgrading some software. Shortly after hitting the “remove snapshot” selection my vmware console crashed with a lost pipe error.

Attempting to reconnect yeilded:

There was a problem connecting:
511 Error connecting to /usr/bin/vmware-serverd process

I was almost ready to reboot the machine when painful memories of my last vmware snapshot gone bad experience entered my mind. I investigated further and found that there were .WRITELOCK files in place in my virtual machine folder. After checking my processes on my vmware box I noticed a file called “sdhelper” using a bit of cpu time.

After a brief google search I stumbled across this article which stated that in the event of removing large snapshots it is not unusual for the console to loose connectivity. It is important to simply wait it out and it will eventually finish recombining your disks and restore your connectivity.

I know from prior experience that snapshots are very finicky creatures and rebooting your machine at a time like this could easily lead to data corruption and the loss of your virtual machine.