How to find hidden snapshots in VMware

Sometimes VMware screws up, and leaves virtual machines running on a hidden snapshot.  This snapshot doesn't show up in the snapshot manager (so you can't remove it), nor does it show up with the consolidate helper.  If you edit the VMX file in the CLI or vSphere client - you can see the disk is pointed to a base disk ending in 00001.vdmk...or sometimes 00005.vmdk

WTF VMware?

If you have a large environment, this can be time consuming and difficult to track down for all your VMs.  However, you can use the power of the command line to save yourself some time.

SSH into the ESX host:

cd /vmfs/volumes/
grep -i 000001.vmdk */*/*.vmx |awk '{print $3}' |sort |uniq |cut -d "\"" -f 2

This will output a list of VMs (and their disks) that are running on a snapshot.  You may be surprised by the number of VMs.

Alternatively via PowerCLI (one-liner swiped from here):

foreach($vmview in get-view -viewtype virtualmachine){ $vmview.Config.Hardware.Device | ? {$_ -is [VMware.Vim.VirtualDisk]} | %{$_.Backing | select @{N="VMname";E={$vmview.name}},Filename |?{$_.FileName.Split('/')[-1] -match ".*\-[0-9]{6}\.vmdk"} }  }

Oh, you want to remove all the snaps at once?  Well, here's my new and improved code, based upon the above.

$DirtyVMs = foreach($vmview in get-view -viewtype virtualmachine){ $vmview.Config.Hardware.Device | ? {$_ -is [VMware.Vim.VirtualDisk]} | %{$_.Backing | select @{N="VMname";E={$vmview.name}},Filename |?{$_.FileName.Split('/')[-1] -match ".*\-[0-9]{6}\.vmdk"} }  }

$VMlist = $dirtyVMs | select VMname -unique

foreach($i in $VMlist)
{
New-Snapshot -Name DirtySnapCleaner -Description "Temporary Snapshot" -Memory:$false -Quiesce:$false -VM $i.VMname -Confirm:$false
Get-Snapshot -vm $i.VMname | remove-snapshot -removechildren -confirm:$false
}