I recently opened a case requesting help discerning the "Orphaned VMDK" widget.
On its surface, this widget is extremely helpful. It shows VMDKs that are not attached to VMs which I can go and delete to reclaim storage.
However...
The widget is only useful in its vanilla form. By that I mean I asked the support rep how I can get data out of it for a report, as I needed to create a report for a group of individuals who did not have access to the Solarwinds console. Below are the steps we went through to attempt this, all of which failed.
- Tried to reproduce the widget in the reports section - Failed
- Reason - There is no report option for Orphaned VMDKs
- Tried to create a report schedule that ran the widget on a reoccurring schedule - Failed
- Reason - The emailed link returned a non functional URL
- Tried to export the widget data from the dashboard itself - Failed
- Only thing that was found to export was a pretty much useless PDF
- I even attempted converting the PDF to a csv or excel sheet, was not pretty
Anyone else been able to do this? I have around 2000 orphaned VMDKs at the moment. Most of these are results from data restores on LUN snapshots, but there are some I know I can delete. But I wanted Solarwinds VMAN to give me some kind of readable report.
To say the least I am a bit frustrated. This is the conclusion support had:
"Good day. I'm updating this case about the Orphaned VMDK. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to export the Chart to an excel file. Also, it seems that we are not allowed to provide the tables and computation for the orphaned vmdks. As discussed, this is a known limitation on the reporting side since the product can't convert a chart to a xls file yet"
Has anyone else cracked this code??
