Never ever seen that happen in Vmware, To be quiet honest , vmware has been superb for us. We also use Veeam for backups and replication and it has been superb. Was your snapshot created by a back up application?
Also are you on discord? We can hook up there and chat.
I believe the Snapshot was created by VMware. The CIO was like what happened so I gave him the analogy that well we went to change the oil then suddenly the engine disappeared.