The shrink feature is not enabled for a virtual machine if any of its virtual disks are. I know i cannot shrink a thin provisioned drive and everything ive read says use the vm converter and it requires a downtime. If you select only the split disk into 2gb files check box, virtual disk can grow when more space is needed. I wanted to know if i used storage vmotion and moved this and changed it to a thick provisioned disk would i then be able to shrink the vmdk file.
Using thin provisioned disks with virtual machines vmware. Disk size is the 1tb disk the vm sees, physical space taken is dependant on thick or thin provisioning, thick will be the same size as the disk, thin will be only the used space out of the 1tb disk. Thick versus thin disk provisioning basics in vmware. How to limit the block usage on a thin provisioned vms vmware 0. Vmware thick disk to thin conversion shrink thin disk. Demystifying vmware thin provisioning searchstorage. How can i reduce thin provisioned allocation of vmdk that. It is however possible to shrink the vmdk back down to the actual size of data that is being used. So i wanted to shrink my vmdk size as much as possible. However, although there is a down arrow present, you cannot shrink the disk in this way, its not supported. Using sdelete and vmkfstools to reclaim thin vmdk space.
One more note before it comes up by my readers, vmware tools shrinking functionality is not support on thin provisioned disks. If you have a virtual disk that grows as data is added, you can shrink it as. Thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. Guest reclaim reclaims dead space from ntfs volumes hosted on a thin provisioned scsi disk. Lets say you have a base os install on a thin vmdk. Below is an image which show what you will get in your shrink page of vmware tools if you are using thin provisioned disk. How to shrink a vmdk using vmware converter techrepublic.
Using the vmtools shrink option in a windows vm with vmware tools running, you can rightclick the vmtools icon and select open vmware tools. This article provides information on thin provisioned disks within vmware esxi esx. Home desktop how to shrink the size of a vmware virtual disk. Shrinking vmdk files with powercli to check out my full post check out my sitei think we can all agree that no matter how you look at it shrinking vmdk files is pretty much a pain in the ass. Download sdelete onto the vm you want to shrink and run the following command, replacing drive. Some things should be simple, shrinking a thin provisioned virtual disk should be one of them, its not. You can verify the disk type from the virtual machine settings page. As far as i know the only way to make a thickprovisioned vmdk into a thinprovisioned one is by using vmware converter. Power off the virtual machine, or disconnect the virtual disk you want to shrink. That is the reason behind me not using it in this post. Shrinking a virtual disk reclaims unused space in the virtual disk and reduces the amount of space that the virtual disk occupies on the host. For thinprovisioned disks, the shrink option is disabled with a message shrinking is disabled for virtual disks not used in persistent mode and other factors, see documentation for your vmware product.
How can i reduce thin provisioned allocation of vmdk that is vmfs6. Reclaiming thin provisioned storage space with vmware. But to start let me first explain what i mean when i say shrinking a vmdk. Possibly the biggest issue that we have with thin provisioning is running out of space on a device that is thin provisioned at the backend. Create a new virtual machine in vmware workstation. Or will it also shrink thin provisioned vmdk on vms currently in this datastore. How to shrink vmdk file of vm in vsphere virtualization blog. Normally, this would clear all unused disk space, but strangely this doesnt work for thinprovisioned disk. It is also possible to store each virtual disk on a different datastore. To shrink a thin provisioned disk vmdk use a thirdparty tool within the guest operating system to zeroout disk blocks that may have. Shrinking thinprovisioned esxi disks miscellaneous. Using vmwares guestinfo interface to configure cloudconfig on a coreos. Download vmware vcenter converter standalone from the official web site.
I do not know a single system where you do not have at least 10gb of free space for os disks. This means the files inside the vm, but the size of the vmdk as well. As the tool deals with active data, please take all precautionary measures understanding the scsi unmap framework and backing up important data. 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. You can use the sysinternals sdelete utility or the vmware tools shrink function. A lot of esxi servers use thin provision configuration where resources are not. Not only do they allow overprovisioning, but with the prevalence of flash storage, performance degradation really isnt a concern like it used to be. 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. Identify disk usage of a thin provisioned virtual disk. Boerlowies blog blog about vmware, powershell, powercli. This will just reduce the vmdks usage on the vmfs datastore not resize the provisioned size of a thin disk. As far as its known this is an unsupported method and can defiantly corrupt or break you virtual disk. Will thinprovisioned vms shrink automatically just as they would grow automatically.
Storage vmotion to thin disk does not reclaim null blocks 2004155. We got a request to reduce the allocated size of thick provisioned virtual machines hard disk. Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned disks rickard nobel. 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. Theres no need to preallocate storage or have huge amounts of unused, but allocated, storage sitting idle. In the vmware case, if you create a thinprovisioned disk, its going to grow. Vmware copy thin provisioned vmdk files expertsexchange. The answer to shrink a thin vmdk is, after using sdelete app, to use vmotion to. Vmware vmdk shrink and storage thin provisioning 101. Read about how we use cookies and how you can control them here. Shrinking disks is not allowed under the following circumstances.
There are no real shrink function in vsphere, but we could use a trick. Move vmware esxi vm to new datastore preserve thin. The first vmdk file is small and points to a sequence of other vmdk files, all of which have an s before a sequence number, meaning sparse. Reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion and thin provisioning 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. 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. In you find yourself stuck on vmware esx because you see that you have configured a vm with thick or thin vhdd vmdk you can rely on some procedures to reconvert them gaining thin provisioning or allocating hdd space on your datastore. Vmware thick disk to thin conversion shrink thin disk size. Once the blocks are written by vmfs with thin provisioning, even if the files are deleted in the guest operating system, these blocks are not automatically reclaimed without the vmware unmap process. To convert a thick provisioned hard disk to thin using command line console.
If a vmdk is removed from a vmfs datastore, the underlying thinprovisioned lun doesnt show more free space. Vmware recovery software is for you to execute proper data revival. Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned vmdk files in esxi server. Esxesxi can shrink the size of a virtual disk only when a virtual machine is exported. The number of vmdk files depends on the disk size requested. To shrink a vmdk we can use an esx command line tool vmkfstools, but first you. The reason for this is that i often need to download the vm to usb storage of whatever and transfer it to remote sites. Vmware esxi doesnt know that the guest has marked blocks as free. Blocks in the vmdk file are not allocated and backed by physical. Using sdelete and vmkfstools to reclaim thin vmdk space using thin provisioned virtual disks can provide many benefits.
If your virtual closet cant hold one more pair of shoes, it might be time to think about vmware vmdk shrink and thin provisioning. Free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting data in a thin provisioned windows. And here a search for commercial tools started that can easily and safely let the vmdk users restores entire data in workable mode. Reclaiming unused vmdk space with storage thin provisioning. This is an important concept to understand as it relates to the unmap command. Single point of control to provision and apply policies to all of your kubernetes. This guide shows how you can shrink the virtual disk files they have the extension. This is required to reclaim space back from the virtual disk. 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. We use cookies for advertising, social media and analytics purposes. Changing thick or thin provisioning for vmdk vmware hdd.
I would like to be able to copy the folders that these vms resied in off to an archive location. Increasing the vmdk size can be done in gui but decreasing the size of vmdk is not allowed. You copy a 1gb file, now your os would report 16gb used and your vmdk grew also to 16gb. Please note that you virtual disk file vmdk will grow to the full size during the process. Before we can use vmkfstools to shrink the vmdk file we must zero out any unused space on the thin provisioned disk. And for new vmfs5 datastores could be a big problem because they use a unified block size of 1mb. When you work with a thin disk provisionned vm, you are copying new files into a vm, then.
Convert a vmware vmdk from thick provisioned to thin. In most cases, for virtual machine hard disk shrink can be performed via v2v. I have a set of virtual machines that are thin provisioned at 1tb each. Since shrink was disabled for thin provisioned disk under windows 7 32bit, i have found an advice to run sdelete. You can observe a similar behavior in case of vmfs and underlying thinprovisioned luns. You can return any information from data storage based on the vmware vmfs file system.
To do this the virtual machine needs to be powered off. Thin provisioned disks and sparse files at vmfs datastores. Download link for all versions of vmware vsphere client. Reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion and thin. I have a virtual machine with a 10 gb thin provisioned disk. Vaai thin provisioning block reclaimunmap in action. Shrink a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk virtualman. Is it safe to reclaim storage from a thin provision datastore when there are critical vms running on high load in this datastore. This article gives the steps to shrink a vmware vmdk virtual disk file from commandline with the vmware utility vmkfstools. A simple way of doing this is by using a free utility called sdelete from sysinternals. Shrinking thin provisioned vmware disks in linux lets consider an example.
But, oftentimes, user wants to recover its vmdk data from corruption cause of virtual machine. In this example we have a thin provisioned vmdk file with the size of 8 gb. The tool can also reclaim space from full disks and partitions, thereby wiping off the file systems on it. One application, with a record of 15 years of effectiveness in this field diskinternals vmfs recovery will help you with this. 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. I have create a virtual disk with thin provisioning enabled. Zero free space using sdelete to shrink thin provisioned vmdk. Move vmware esxi vm to new datastore preserve thinprovisioning. Why did you create a 150gb thin partition if you did not have the space to. Shrinking thinprovisioned vmware disks in linux lets consider an example. This commandline tool has a powerful feature which can track and zero unused blocks. This post demonstrates various ways to identify the disk usage of a thin provisioned virtual disk. Shrink a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk in 15 minutes.
685 682 904 1076 983 251 91 724 1369 1410 462 1185 43 933 871 1569 748 933 1180 1346 570 566 1556 1585 1164 1681 439 839 982 1066 534 1123 1036 1068 1344 336 902 563