Reducing the size of a thick provisioned vmdk without vmotion. Reclaiming thin provisioned storage on windows using sdelete. Reclaim space in a vm on thin or thick vmdks karims blog. May 06, 2017 when you delete data on thinprovisioned disks, the physical size of the vmdk file for the disk remain the same as before deleting the data, thinprovisioned disks grow in one direction, but doesnt shrink automatically, and this is a big issue for vsphere admins. Nov 25, 2009 one more note before it comes up by my readers, vmware tools shrinking functionality is not support on thin provisioned disks. Free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting data in a thin provisioned windows vm. Dec 05, 2011 and for new vmfs5 datastores could be a big problem because they use a unified block size of 1mb. A similar technique can be used to shrink thin provisioned guest hard disks. How to shrink a vmdk using vmware converter techrepublic. Running sdelete with the following command will clear all lost space. Not only do they allow over provisioning, but with the prevalence of flash storage, performance degradation really isnt a concern like it used to be. It doesnt matter if you move between vmfs3 or vmfs5, if you try to force the thin conversion, of if you try to converter to thick and then to thin seems that you need different block size to reclaim the zeroed blocks in a thin vmdk. A simple way of doing this is by using a free utility called sdelete from sysinternals.
How to shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. Using sdelete and vmkfstools to reclaim thin vmdk space. The syntax for the sdelete command is sdelete z driveletter. This post tells the step by step procedure to shrink or resize the vmdk using vmware vcenter converter standalone. So, how do you go about shrinking the vmdk file and can it be done without. Vmware also has the ability to thin provision virtual disks vmdk files. Make sure you have space to accommodate this on your volumes. Shrinking virtual disks and automating shrink with the.
Mar 05, 20 shrinking a thick provisioned disk in vmware esxi 5. But as i began downloading the vmdk disk image from my esxi server in vmware, i noticed that it took a very long time. Using sdelete and vmkfstools to reclaim thin vmdk space using thin provisioned virtual disks can provide many benefits. Vmware advanced vmdk size reclamation for thinprovisioned disks. Is it safe to reclaim storage from a thin provision datastore when there are critical vms running on high load in this datastore. Sdelete is a command line utility that takes a number of options. Vmware copy thin provisioned vmdk files expertsexchange. Download sdelete onto the vm you want to shrink and run the following command, replacing drive. I do not know a single system where you do not have at least 10gb of free space for os disks. Shrink a vmdk virtualbox disk image stack overflow. The disk itself will report as large as before to the os, though. Convert a vmdk from thick to thin on esx bonus bits. How to reclaim unused disk space on nfs storage wahl network.
Please note that i dont want to focus on reclaiming space from underlaying luns. In addition to the writecache, we also redirect our page file and windows event logs to this disk for this experiment we will refer to this. This means the files inside the vm, but the size of the vmdk as well. Okay, lets try to storage vmotion the vm to another datastore and select thin provisioned format 3. With vmware being the market leader do they not just have this feature builtin and automatic. Howto shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk 28. For a thin virtual disk, esxi provisions the entire space required for the disks current and future activities, for example 40gb.
Dec 24, 2016 how to shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. Ive seen a number of posts on the vmtn forums as well as had discussions with folks regarding reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion so i thought it made sense to do a quick writeup on how this process works. For example, if you wrote 10gb of data to a thin provisioned disk and then deleted it, although from the vms perspective the space is now free, from the perspective of the physical disk that the thin provisioned vmdk is provisioned. The amount of space used on the vms is less than the vmdk file size. Reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion and thin. Reclaiming unused vmdk space with storage thin provisioning. Sep 24, 2016 for example, if you wrote 10gb of data to a thinprovisioned disk and then deleted it, although from the vms perspective the space is now free, from the perspective of the physical disk that the thinprovisioned vmdk is provisioned on the 10gb of data is still there. Reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion and thin provisioning. These tests compare vmwares shrink process to sdeletes and might suggest that sdelete is fractionally better. You may need to shrink a vmdk to prevent wasted storage space or to reduce a vm to its true storage footprint before a conversionexport. Shrinking virtual disks and automating shrink with the sdelete tool. Howto convert a vmdk from thick to thin provisioning on. Some things should be simple, shrinking a thin provisioned virtual disk should be one of them, its not.
Shrinking thinprovisioned esxi disks miscellaneous knowledge. Vm itself and running sdelete, its time to shrink the vmdk. This will just reduce the vmdk s usage on the vmfs datastore not resize the provisioned size of a thin disk. Reclaim deleted space on san from thin provisioned lun. To shrink a thinprovisioned vmdk the guest filesystem has to be zeroed out. Nov 09, 2015 free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting data in a thin provisioned windows vm. Since shrink was disabled for thinprovisioned disk under windows 7 32bit, i have found an advice to run sdelete. To shrink a vmdk we can use an esx command line tool vmkfstools, but first you have to zero out any free space on your thin provisioned disk.
Dear data storage experts, we are using a san attached thin provisioned lun on physical. Is there any way to copy these files at only the used amount. Feb 21, 2011 reclaiming thin disk space with storage vmotion and sdelete. A similar technique can be used to shrink thinprovisioned guest hard disks. Zero out, deflate, or whatever you want to call it. This is used to optimize the virtual disk file within the guest os. Shrink a thinprovisioned vmdk if youve thin provisioned a vmdk under esxi and need to reduce it for whatever reason, the official vmware documentation suggest to migrate the vm to another datastore using vmware converter which is not always practical, thankfully an alternative exists. I have a set of virtual machines that are thin provisioned at 1tb each. How to zero free space to shrink a thin provisioned vmdk. Apr 25, 2012 or will it also shrink thin provisioned vmdk on vms currently in this datastore. The only supported method of shrinking a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk is to use vmware vcenter converter standalone and create a virtual to virtual v2v conversion, a similar process to a physical to virtual p2v conversion. Storage vmotion the vm to another datastore, but the vmdk is still. How to shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk. Reclaim wasted capacity of vmdk files arab it network.
Heres a screenshot of me running sdelete inside of the guest operating system and the resulting file size after it has finished zapping my w drive. Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned disks rickard nobel. Thin provisioning is another type of storage preallocation. Dead space reclamation for citrix xendesktop using sdelete. On windows guests we can use the sysinternals tool sdelete replace the drive. Not only do they allow overprovisioning, but with the prevalence of flash storage, performance degradation really isnt a concern like it used to be. Sdelete accepts wild card characters as part of the directory or file specifier. There way to huge for what i need to want to take them from 500gb to 100gb. This article gives the steps to convert a thick provisioned virtual hard drive vmdk to thin provisioned on esx 4 or newer. So i wanted to shrink my vmdk size as much as possible. Only way to do that currently is to move the guest between two luns of different block size, which is no longer. Ive tried the sdelete followed by the vmfstools comments, no luck.
Vaai thin provisioning block reclaimunmap in action vmware. Aug 15, 2012 thinprovisioned virtual disks sdelete alternative to reclaiming space by joe abusamra aug 15, 2012 1 comment at a high level, thin provisioning is the act of using virtualization technology to give the appearance of more physical resource than is actually available. With esxi, you can use two models of thin provisioning, arraylevel and virtual disklevel. Currently, vmware does not have automatic space reclamation, unless youre running a san which supports this and you have the necessary components installed, such as equallogics hitkit. This video shows perfectstorage running a reclaim operation in an esxhosted windows server 2008 guest in order to shrink a thin provisioned vmdk.
Storage vmotion to thin disk does not reclaim null blocks. Migrate the vm guest to another datastore and change the advanced configuration of the hard drive to thin provisioned. Im only talking about shrinking thin provisioned disks. I would like to be able to copy the folders that these vms resied in off to an archive location. The problem is that the vmdk files show the full 1tb.
Heard that writing zeros to the deleted space will actually reclaim the space for thin provisioned device. Nov 24, 2014 howto shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk posted by fgrehl on november 24, 2014 leave a comment 25 go to comments thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. From all ive read, im expecting the physical size of the vmdk file to be less than 100gb. Or should we move all the vms out or at least power them down before executing esxcli storage vmfs unmap l. Shrinking a thick provisioned disk in vmware esxi 5. Nov 07, 20 before we can use vmkfstools to shrink the vmdk file we must zero out any unused space on the thin provisioned disk. To shrink a vmdk we can use an esx command line tool vmkfstools, but first you. I am creating a brand new vm and specifying a 100gb thin provisioned hard disk. In my previous post, i have explained how to resize vmdk using vmkfstools and also how to extend c. As you can see i started below with a 40gb vmdk 42gb 2gb memory swap file that was using 18gb space. Boerlowies blog blog about vmware, powershell, powercli.
It talks about using sdelete from sysinternals to zero out blocks, and then has you run a vmkfstools command inside of esx to release the now. You can also use the shrink disk from vmware tools to reclaim the delete space. In any given use, it allows you to delete one or more files andor directories, or to cleanse the free space on a logical disk. To reclaim space on a windows vmdk, download sdelete to the local hard disk. The reason for this is that i often need to download the vm to usb storage of whatever and transfer it to remote sites. Shrink a thinprovisioned vmdk if youve thinprovisioned a vmdk under esxi and need to reduce it for whatever reason, the official vmware documentation suggest to migrate the vm to another datastore using vmware converter which is not always practical, thankfully an alternative exists. A thin provisioned virtual disk consumes only the space that it needs initially, and grows with time according to demand. Im only talking about shrinking thinprovisioned disks. Feb 24, 2016 however, although there is a down arrow present, you cannot shrink the disk in this way, its not supported. Shrink a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk virtualman. On closer inspection i found out that the vmdk was taking up 40 gb of space even though it is setup to do thin provisioning and the windows installation only took about 7 gb. With the disklevel thin provisioning feature, you can create virtual disks in a thin format. Thin provisioning this method contrast with thick provisioning and helps you eliminate storage underutilization problems by allocating storage space in a flexible ondemand manner.
If not, you can svmotion the vmdk and set the target as thin. Shrinking thinprovisioned esxi disks miscellaneous. Vmware vmdk shrink and storage thin provisioning 101 searchvmware. Dec 11, 2018 sdelete is a command line utility that takes a number of options. Since shrink was disabled for thin provisioned disk under windows 7 32bit, i have found an advice to run sdelete. The size on disk has nearly reached the provisioned size. In a windows virtual machine, run the sdelete command or a tool with similar functionality to zero out all unused space. I have a 16 tb thick provisioned disk but the vm is only using 9tb of this. After reimporting the vm from the previously exported.
Vmware esx 4 reclaiming thin provisioned disk unused space. Vmware vmdk shrink and storage thin provisioning 101. That is the reason behind me not using it in this post. Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned vmdk files in esx by lunarg on december 12th 2014, at 12. Assuming i can find a way to do step 1 on a particular vm, do you know if this method works with any type of vm regardless of the guest os. So i followed the following way to get my newly created thick vmdk thin again. Shrink thin provisioned disks vmware discussion in. Thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. I have a vm assigned about 2tb thin provisioned of disk space and it. Delete data from the vms vmdk, but the vmdk is still the same size. How to release unused blocks from a thin provisioned vmdk. To shrink a thin provisioned vmdk the guest filesystem has to be zeroed out. Still waiting on an automated or commandbased manner to shrink a thin vmdk for a guest whos usage had bloated and was later shrunk.
Also, if youre doing it on a thin provisioned disk, youll have vm. However, whilst thin provisioned disks can semalessly grow themselves, they cannot be shrunk as easily. Zero free space using sdelete to shrink thin provisioned vmdk. However, the thin disk commits only as much storage. When you have some vms with thin provisioned disks, you may have noticed that these will continue to grow, and never shrink, even after cleaning out data from within the vm. Many storage arrays such as hps 3par line, datacore, and others have the ability to thin provision storage. Vaai thin provisioning block reclaimunmap in action. Over time virtual machine guests will grow in size if provisioned as a thin disk due to files being copied or log files being generated, once the files are unallocated deleted or moved the vmdk still reserves the location as used thus causing excessive white space. How to release unused blocks from a thinprovisioned vmdk. Reclaiming thin disk space with storage vmotion and sdelete. Option 1 migrate the vm guest to another datastore and change the advanced configuration of the hard drive to thin provisioned. After cleaning up the vm itself and running sdelete, its time to shrink the vmdk.
The writecache itself is attached to the vm as a separate thin provisioned vmdk when the target device is created with our vm template. This will just reduce the vmdks usage on the vmfs datastore not resize the provisioned size of a thin disk. Below is an image which show what you will get in your shrink page of vmware tools if you are using thin provisioned disk. So first zero out the deleted space with sdelete and then use storage vmotion to convert the disk to thin. Unfortunately, i dont have any datastore with enough space on it for me to vmotion, copy, or clone the vmdk to. How to shrink over provisioned disk on a vm hello, i run beware sphere 6. So it looks like they used up a lot of space and then deleted it from windows, but of course the vmdk doesnt shrink when you free up space.
Before we can use vmkfstools to shrink the vmdk file we must zero out any unused space on the thin provisioned disk. Inflation of the vmdk file is a temporary thing and is caused by the way sdelete does its magic. When you delete data on thin provisioned disks, the physical size of the vmdk file for the disk remain the same as before deleting the data, thin provisioned disks grow in one direction, but doesnt shrink automatically, and this is a big issue for vsphere admins. For example, if you create a new thin provisioned 30gb virtual disk and copy 10 gb of files to it, the size of the resulting vmdk file will be 10 gb, whereas you. Thinprovisioned virtual disks sdelete alternative to. Free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting. I see a lot of questions and answers surrounding thin provisioning on vmware esxi but not exactly what im encountering. Now sdelete has finished, we need to run vmkfstools on the datastore to shrink the thin provisioned vmdk back down to size.
Tool to reclaim spaceshrink thin provisioned disks. Is there a tool to automatically reclaim the space on thin provisioned disks. Oct 25, 2005 obliviously, there have been other changes taking place between test3 and test1. Some storage systems present all devices as thinprovisioned no matter whether the devices are thin or thick. Regardless if your vmdk is thin or thick, if i recall correctly the svmotion is still required to get your blocks back. Running sdelete will increase the size of the thin provisioned disk to its maximum size.
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