Hiya,
I had a snapshot disaster last night and thought to register and start a discussion rather than looking for speculative suggestions. I am new to this so please bear with me. 
Hardware/Software Details:
- VMware Infrastructure Client Version 2.5.0
- VMware Virtual Center Version 2.5.0
- VMware ESX Server 3.5.0, 207095
- Host is IBM x3650 Intel Xeon(R) X5450
- VM in question is a Gentoo (32 bit) Linux 2.6.32-hardened-r9 with VMware Tools installed on it.
- My task was to expand the partition space (/dev/sda3) - this is something I have tested on different vm's, so I was confident
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Last night I created a snapshot of this production VM then for more security, I created a clone too.
After creating the snapshot, I wanted to confirm the snapshot is healthy so I tried reverting back to it BUT, I got an "Operation failed: A general error has occured" instead. Puzzled, I thought the snapshot might not be working to I tried powering on the VM but again the same error occured. At this point my adrenaline level was up. Next thing, I see is I had lost the snapshot chain tree in the manager and to top it all up, I couldn't start the VM.
following errors on host can be seen atm:
- A general system error occured: Internal error
- Operation Timed out.
- Operation failed since another task in progress.
- An invalid snapshot configuration was detected.
- Could not power on VM: No swap file. Failed to power on VM.
Finding the clone as my last resort, I power it up and there it go. I had the working vm. Connected the network to make sure it replaces the old live vm (which couldnt be power on). Successfully did the partition resize through knoppix Gparted.
Good news is the vm is up and running with increased space.
Bad news is when I ssh to the vm - it says 10GB, however on the vmware console it says 20GB.
The old vm is not powered on (and is not even present/seen in the cluster) and I am puzzled what is going on. And why the df -h is showing differently between ssh and console.
Any help would be appreciated. Let me know if you require any more details and I will try to dig out.
cheers,
midway