Snapshot removal error – A general system error occurred: Fault cause: vim.fault.GenericVmConfigFault

We had a virtual machine where there were old snapshots and we were unable to delete the snapshots. It was giving error “A general system error occurred: Fault cause: vim.fault.GenericVmConfigFault”

To resolve this below steps were taken.

1. login to ESXi host through PUTTY.
2. Browse to virtual machine directory.
3. Here we found there were multiple snapshot files with extension vmsd and vmsn files.
4. We created a tmp directory and moved all these files to the tmp directory.
5. Next step will be to reload the virtual machine configuration file using below commands.
   1. vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | grep -i <vmname>
   2. vim-cmd vmsvc/reload <vmid>

All the above steps are online and no downtime is required for the VM. Once the VM is reloaded you will get VM consolidation alarm on the vCenter, just consolidate the VM to clear all the snapshots.

Thanks for reading……