Find lost or unknown snapshots

While not common, there are times when a snapshot might get lost or not be reported properly. Many times, this happens as a result of backup software leveraging snapshots and not cleaning up properly. So what is a lost or unknown snapshot? It's a VM where the VM definition points to a VMDK that has a parent; however, vSphere does not show that it has a snapshot.

What is an easy way to see a VMDK with a parent defined? Snapshots usually take the parent's name and append -0000# to the end of the name to create the snapshot disk. In the definition of this VMDK file, it points to a parent. VMware Horizon View uses this method to create linked clones where a parent is shared by many child VMs. However, in a vSphere environment, it can spell trouble if the child disk grows to the same size as its parent and it is not intended to be a long term snapshot. Although the problem appears to be more prevalent in the earlier version of vSphere, it is still a great way to...