Posted on by harlan

How to Find Which Replica Disk a VMware View Linked Clone Uses

In VMware View (Horizon), each linked clone desktop is built from a replica disk. When you need to know which linked clones depend on which replica, for example before cleaning up storage, you can find out from the ESX/ESXi console.

Steps

1. Log in to the ESX host as root. On ESXi, open the console, press Alt+F1, and type unsupported (or use SSH).

2. Find every small descriptor .vmdk that points to a replica parent:

find /vmfs/volumes/ \( -size -1500c \) -name '*.vmdk' -exec grep replica {} -H \; | grep 'parentFileNameHint=' > replicalist.txt

3. Make the output easier to read by inserting an arrow between each clone and its replica:

sed 's/:/-->>/' < replicalist.txt > replicalist2.txt

4. View the results:

less replicalist2.txt

The output looks like this:

/vmfs/volumes/4cceb02c-6fba721c-a0ff-001e0b1f4ca2/test-2/test-2.vmdk-->>parentFileNameHint="/vmfs/volumes/4cceb02c-6fba721c-a0ff-001e0b1f4ca2/replica-8581f32c-a851-448e-8ea8-/replica-8581f32c-a851-448e-8ea8-.vmdk"
/vmfs/volumes/4cceb02c-6fba721c-a0ff-001e0b1f4ca2/test-1/test-1.vmdk-->>parentFileNameHint="/vmfs/volumes/4cceb02c-6fba721c-a0ff-001e0b1f4ca2/replica-8581f32c-a851-448e-8ea8-/replica-8581f32c-a851-448e-8ea8-.vmdk"

Reading the Results

  • Linked clones are on the left of -->> and their replica is on the right. Other VMs besides pool desktops may also appear.
  • The replica name in vCenter Server is longer than the folder and .vmdk name in the datastore. For example, vCenter shows replica-ae5923a9-4991-41e7-ba03-07c61429d839 while the .vmdk is replica-ae5923a9-4991-41e7-ba03-.vmdk.