VSAN-Troubleshooting-Reference-Manual

Diagnostics and Troubleshooting Reference Manual – Virtual SAN
Removing orphaned vswp objects from the Virtual SAN datastore
As mentioned, in Virtual SAN 6.0, VMware has provided an RVC tool to clean up
stranded vswp objects that are now inaccessible. This tool will purge all inaccessible
vswp objects from the Virtual SAN datastore and allow a full data evacuation to take
place.
To ensure that the object is a vswp object and not some other object, the tool finds
the active data components and reads the extended attributes that will tell us
whether or not it is a vswp object.
Note that if the inaccessible object only contains witness and there are no active
data components, Virtual SAN cannot read the extended attributes, so it cannot
determine if the stranded object is vswp object or some other object. However,
assuming that the virtual machine was deployed with a
NumberOfFailuresToTolerate=1 attribute, then there is 2 in 3 chance that the
remaining component for the vswp object is an active data component and not the
witness.
In the case where the remaining component of the object is indeed the witness, the
command will allow a user to force delete those witness-only objects.
Caution: Extreme caution needs to exercise here because this command will also allow
you to force delete non-vswp objects (which may cause a real data loss). If you are not
completely sure that this is indeed a vswp object, please contact GSS for support with
the upgrade.
vsan.purge_inaccessible_vswp_objects
> vsan.purge_inaccessible_vswp_objects -h
usage: purge_inaccessible_vswp_objects [opts] cluster_or_host
Search and delete inaccessible vswp objects on a virtual SAN cluster.
cluster_or_host: Path to a ClusterComputeResource or HostSystem
--force, -f: Force to delete the inaccessible vswp objects quietly (no
interactive confirmations)
--help, -h: Show this message
If a vswp object goes inaccessible, this virtual machine will be unable to do any
swapping. If the ESXi tries to swap this virtual machines pages while the vswp file is
inaccessible, this may cause the virtual machines to crash. By deleting the
inaccessible vswp object, things are not any worse for the virtual machine. However,
it does remove all possibility of the object regaining accessibility in future time if
this inaccessibility is due just a temporary issue on the cluster (e.g. due to network
failure or planned maintenance). The command to purge inaccessible swap objects
will not cause data loss by deleting the vswp object. The vswp object will be
regenerated when the virtual machine is next powered on.
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