Overview

When a virtual machine (VM) is shut down, part of that process is the deletion of its .vswp or virtual machine swap file. If, however, the host on which the VM is running crashes, the .vswp file may not get removed. When the VM powers back up, it will create a new .vswp file and leave the old one in place. If there are several host crashes, this can start to eat up datastore space, robbing your VMs of space for snapshots or causing issues if you’ve over-allocated your storage.

Procedure

First off, a warning. If you delete the active .vswp file I don’t know what will happen, but I’m sure it will be Very Bad Indeed. Therefore, the most important part of this procedure is to identify the newest or youngest .vswp file created. This should be the one with the latest time stamp on it.

Another way to guarantee you identify the correct .vswp file is to shutdown the virtual machine properly. This will remove the active .vswp file, leaving behind only the extra ones you no longer need. To minimize confusion, make sure there are no snapshots of the VM prior to shutting it down.

Once you’ve identified the active .vswp file or shut the VM down to remove it, you can then use the vCenter client to browse your VM’s datastore and remove the extra .vswp file or files.