Yes, if you import an ovf, it will give you options of what you want to do with the disk, if you use storage vmotion, it will ask you the same options, if you want to convert disk type, but it will not shrink the disk. How to shrink vmware virtual disk files and disable. While eager zeroed thick disks provide the best performance, they occupy the entire space. For a thin virtual disk, esxi provisions the entire space required for the disks current and future activities. Download sdelete onto the vm you want to shrink and run the following command, replacing drive. Esx esxi can shrink the size of a virtual disk only when a virtual machine is exported. Thin vs lazy thick vs eager thick disk performing profiling on all flash arrays. I have a virtual machine with a 10 gb thin provisioned disk. Next, we get esxi to look for any zero blocks of data occupied by the vmdk disk. Shut down the virtual machine ssh to esxi server console, where virtual machine resides. Shrinking thinprovisioned esxi disks miscellaneous knowledge. You can observe a similar behavior in case of vmfs and underlying thinprovisioned luns. The disk really only has 10gb of files stored on it ie 70gb free. Raxco developed perfectstorage with research and input from some of the worlds largest companies and leading storage vendors such as hp, dell and hitachi.
Jan 24, 2011 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 quick writeup on how this process works. Now you should reduce the size of vmdk, after you make a ssh connection into your host you should go. Vmdk size will be then the actual used size on the vms hard disk. The zerofree utility is much quicker than the old dd ifdevzero method and it does not expand the thinprovisioned volume to full size, but it requires that the partition be unmounted.
The zerofree utility is much quicker than the old dd ifdevzero method and it does not expand the thin provisioned volume to full size, but it requires that the partition be unmounted. With the disklevel thin provisioning feature, you can create virtual disks in a thin format. 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. Find answers to how to shrink server disk volume on vmware esxi 4. Nov 25, 2009 one more note before it comes up by my readers, vmware tools shrinking functionality is not support on thin provisioned disks. Jun 03, 2011 how can you expand or shrink an existing virtual disk vmdk in esxi esx. Storage vmotion to thin disk does not reclaim null blocks. How to resize vmdk disks in esxesxi how can you expand or shrink an existing virtual disk vmdk in esxiesx. Nov 24, 2014 i am not considering databases, applications or fileservers which will grow constantly. However, whilst thinprovisioned disks can semalessly grow themselves, they cannot be shrunk as easily.
You can determine the actual storage usage in the storage reports. After cleaning up the vm itself and running sdelete, its time to shrink the vmdk. When you work with a thin disk provisionned vm, you are copying new files into a vm, then. 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 given vms entire constituent data resides in this single disk file. The same steps can be used to shrink a windows drive. Lun space by sending scsi unmap reclaim commands to a vmware esxi. Using thin provisioned virtual disks can provide many benefits. Howto shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk vadims kb.
To shrink a vmdk we can use an esx command line tool vmkfstools, but first you. From the perspective of esxi, nothing really happened to that vmdk data is still stored in those same locations despite files being deleted in the guest os. Before we can use vmkfstools to shrink the vmdk file we must zero out any unused space on the thin provisioned disk. I have shrunk the space on the server itself windows, but vsphere does not allow reducing the size of disk assigned to a vm. Move vmware esxi vm to new datastore preserve thin. Vmware vcenter converter standalone product download center 2017. Identify disk usage of a thin provisioned virtual disk. Reducing the size of the vmware virtual machine disk vmdk with desctripter file on esxi host. Vmware thick disk to thin conversion shrink thin disk size. Sep 06, 2012 the reason for this is that i often need to download the vm to usb storage of whatever and transfer it to remote sites. Before you get started you should know that, if this is done repeatedly, the virtual disk can become unavailable, effectively causing a denial of service.
Mar 10, 2014 2 you can also convert thick disk to think if that too works. When you work with a thin disk provisionned vm, you are copying new files into a vm, then deleting them, again and again, this process grow the thin disks over time. Since the disk is already in thinprovision format, you can choose the wizard to keep disk format or change to thin provisioned disk. Related articles howto grow a vmdk with vmkfstools howto convert a vmdk from thick to thin on esx. When attempting to thin a disk after either using vmware tools prepare to shrink option or using a third. How to reclaim disk space from virtual machines with thin virtual disks in vmware vsphere. Shrink the partition residing within a disk before reducing the size of a virtual disk. So i wanted to shrink my vmdk size as much as possible. If there is a large difference between the amount of data stored by the vm and the space consumed by the virtual disk file it could be worth to reclaim the space. Shrink a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk virtualman. Vmdk shrink is the equivalent of a thorough closet cleaning. I have a 100gb thin disk which is about 80gb vmdk file on the storage device. See vmware virtual disk manager options for a description of commandline options.
Reclaiming thin provisioned storage space with vmware. They dont shrink on their own to release freed disk space. Let me begin with saying that if the disk in question is already thin provisioned, then you dont have to do anything else then shut down the vm and edit the hard disk properties to. Shrink a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk in 15 minutes in my previous experts exchange articles, most have featured basic and intermediate vmware and virtualisation topics. Vmware admins also need to keep an eye on capacity alerts, because thin provisioned vms grow over time. However, although there is a down arrow present, you cannot shrink the disk in this way, its not supported. Dec 25, 20 how to shrink vmdk using aiom partition assistant software step 1. Adding a 2nd hard drive or solid state drive to a laptop by replacing the dvd or bluray drive duration. Power off the vm and ssh into your esxi host and navigate to the vmdks.
After sdelete has cleared your drive, vcenter will still show maximum disk usage, so the last step in reclaiming space is to use storage vmotion. Since i see that a lot of people wonder how to do this, i thought id share with you. Some things should be simple, shrinking a thin provisioned virtual disk should be one of them, its not. Sometimes you just want to disable shrinking of vmdk for certain vms.
Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned vmdk files in esxi server. Above, we mentioned a solution to shrink thin provisioned disks manually. This means the files inside the vm, but the size of the vmdk as well. That is the reason behind me not using it in this post. The reason for this is that i often need to download the vm to usb storage of whatever and transfer it to remote sites. How to effectively reduce the file size of a mac os x. Decrease the amount of partition within your os and then shutdown your vm click on shrink volume enter the amount of space that we calculated before 2. Sep 24, 2016 thinprovisioned disks can be pretty useful in esxi. Thick vs thin disks and all flash arrays vmware vsphere blog. Login to the virtual machine and shrink the partition you want at windows level with disk management. Storage vmotion the vm to another datastore and convert it to thin. Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned disks rickard nobel. In most cases, for virtual machine hard disk shrink can be performed via v2v.
Vmware vmdk shrink and storage thin provisioning 101. A simple way of doing this is by using a free utility called sdelete from sysinternals. How to resize windows virtual machine disks by tom finnis in backup. This commandline tool has a powerful feature which can track and zero unused blocks. There has always been an ongoing debate on whether thin or thick disks are best suited for high performance io workloads. Thin provisioned disk shows 0kb size on the datastore even though it is a 40 gig disk. Above, we mentioned a solution to shrink thinprovisioned disks manually.
It is not recommended by vmware to decrease the size of virtual disks, but if you have to reduce your virtual disk you can follow these steps. Then you can storage vmotion the disk to a different data store changing it to thin provisioned, it will reclaim the unused space. Shrink a vmware workstation disk with vmware tools command. Thin an existing large virtual disk so it consumes less datastore space, without actually shrinking the virtual disk. Perfectstorage reclaims space automatically on thinprovisioned disks, improving. How can the underling vmfs datastore know which ntfs. The thin disks will start very small and grow as data is added within the vm. Whats the best way to move a vm from one datastore to another on a single esxi host, while maintaining the vmdk thinprovisioning.
Storage vmotion back to the original datastore if desired. Feb 24, 2016 in fact, increasing the size of a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk is straightforward, and is supported in the vsphere client, by selecting the virtual hard disk, and increasing the size using the up arrow. Detailed steps shrink a vmware virtual machine disk vmdk virtualman. Updated enable vasa on hp p4000 lefthand san with vsphere 5.
Resizing shrinking guest hard drive sizes with vmware. Beware of these seemingly innocent vm tasks that can balloon a thin disk and wreak havoc on the it infrastructure. Here are the steps to convert a thick vmdk file to thin. How to shrink vmdk file of vm in vsphere virtualization blog. Perfectstorage automatically reclaim space on thinprovisioned. I am not considering databases, applications or fileservers which will grow constantly.
I have a vm assigned about 2tb thin provisioned of disk space and it. How to shrink decrease a virtual machines disk vmware duration. How can i reduce thin provisioned allocation of vmdk that is vmfs6. Is it possible to shrink that overly large disk and recover the unused lun space. This post demonstrates various ways to identify the disk usage of a thin provisioned virtual disk. Vmware esxi doesnt know that the guest has marked blocks as free. Jul 07, 2018 free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting data in a thin.
This article will provide you information on how to shrink or decrease the disk size. There are many different scenarios where this comes into play, and there many different ways to get the desired results. If you convert straight to a thin disk and skip the 2gbsparse conversion it will not shrink. Mar 05, 20 shrinking a thick provisioned disk in vmware esxi 5. Download a 30day free trial and see how easily you can reclaim space on thinprovisioned disks. Reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion and thin provisioning. You may not be able to shrink the disk as small as you like, as windows creats a copy of the mft in the middle of the disk, and will not move it. 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. The shrink option is unavailable if the disk is thin. Shrinking of a thin disk can be performed only by using vmware converter in the virtual machine and performing a virtual to virtual migration.
Free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting. Move vmware esxi vm to new datastore preserve thinprovisioning. Nov 09, 2015 adding a 2nd hard drive or solid state drive to a laptop by replacing the dvd or bluray drive duration. Esxi 6 equallogic reclaim free space virtualization howto. For example, you can create and manage vmfs datastores on a physical partition, or manipulate virtual disk files, stored on vmfs or nfs datastores. Since shrink was disabled for thinprovisioned disk under windows 7 32bit, i have found an advice to run sdelete. Home posts reclaiming thin provisioned storage space with vmware unmap. With the release of vsphere 5, this process is slightly different, with vsphere 4 and vi3, you had to install vmware converter on the vcenter server then download and enable the plugin in your vi client software like this vmware now only have the standalone converter, so for vsphere 5 you dont install anything on the vcenter server, the converter runs on a. Download a 30day free trial and see how easily you can reclaim space on. One more note before it comes up by my readers, vmware tools shrinking functionality is not support on thin provisioned disks. Dec 05, 2011 and for new vmfs5 datastores could be a big problem because they use a unified block size of 1mb. This guide shows how you can shrink the virtual disk files they have the extension. The only other thing you could do is to clone the disk in question to a thin disk from command line with the vmkfstools i command. There are no real shrink function in vsphere, but we could use a trick.
Shrinking vmdk with no storage available to move it to. Use third party toolif its a windows we can use sdelete to zeroout the disk blocks and using vmkfstools we can shrink the disk storage vmotion the virtual machine or vmdk to a datastore formatted with a different block size. The thin disks will start very small and grow as data is added within the vm, however if data is logically deleted inside the vm the thin disk will not shrink. A common issue with thin disks is that the size will grow when required, but never shrink.
Shrinking disks is not allowed under the following circumstances. We got a request to reduce the allocated size of thick provisioned virtual machines hard disk. If you delete files from within the vm wanting to gain the space back, it just dont work. I had downloaded a bunch of ova and iso files and had forgotten to move. If a vmdk is removed from a vmfs datastore, the underlying thinprovisioned lun doesnt show more free space. How to shrink a thin provisioned virtual disk vmdk. 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. From the datastore browser from the vsphere client we could. The vmfs unmap operations inform the storage array that the blocks that it still has allocated as being in use are now able to be unmapped and the space. How can i reduce thin provisioned allocation of vmdk that is. If you are thin provisioning vms in your environment with an equallogic san attached to your cluster, you may find that you start receiving warning from san hq or your group manager alerting which states id.
What is the best way to shrink a thin provisioned disk. I see a lot of questions and answers surrounding thin provisioning on vmware esxi but not exactly what im encountering. Vaai thin provisioning block reclaimunmap in action. Using sdelete and vmkfstools to reclaim thin vmdk space. Free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after deleting data in a thin. Below is an image which show what you will get in your shrink page of vmware tools if. Convert thick disk to thin on esxi free advanced data. You can use this method for virtual machines that are running on vmware esxi or vmware workstation. The virtual machine has a mac os x guest operating system. Zero free space using sdelete to shrink thin provisioned vmdk. How to shrink a thickprovisioned disk vmware communities. We need to shutdown vm, but works faster than option 1. Free up esxi local drive vmfs datastore space after.
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. There are a few reasons why you might wish to shrink a virtual disk, one. From the dropdown, select the thin provision virtual disk format. Still waiting on an automated or commandbased manner to shrink a thin vmdk for a guest whos usage had bloated and was later shrunk. You can verify the disk type from the virtual machine settings page. Null blocks are copied from source to destination resulting in a vmdk that is the same size, despite thin being chosen as the destination disk type. Here are the steps if you choose to go with option 2 or if you need to convert thick to thin disk for some reason. Reclaiming unused vmdk space with storage thin provisioning. Shrinking a thick provisioned disk in vmware esxi 5. Track users it needs, easily, and with only the features you need. Reclaim disk space on vmware thin disk vmware,microsoft.
I think you are unable to convert thick to thin in order to zero punch a disk and shrink it if there isnt enough free space. 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. Since the client is windows, download the sdelete tool and use it. Increasing the vmdk size can be done in gui but decreasing the size of vmdk is not allowed. This will just reduce the vmdks usage on the vmfs datastore not resize the provisioned size of a thin disk. If there is a large difference between the amount of data stored by the vm and the space consumed by the virtual disk file. This post describes about the steps to shrink the vmdk disk using vmware converter. If you would like to read my basic vmware articles, they are listed here for your convenience. Theres no need to preallocate storage or have huge amounts of unused, but allocated, storage sitting idle.
Below is an image which show what you will get in your shrink page of vmware tools if you are using thin provisioned disk. Shrink a vmware workstation disk with vmware tools command line utility in windows published by robbastiaansen on thu, 101020 11. Nov 23, 2014 this post demonstrates various ways to identify the disk usage of a thin provisioned virtual disk. How to shrink decrease a virtual machines disk vmware.
Reclaiming disk space with storage vmotion and thin. How can i reduce thin provisioned allocation of vmdk that. A virtual disk that immediately occupies the entire provisioned space is a thick disk. Clone the thick disk to a thin and then disconnect the original thick disk, then you just add the newly created thin disk to the machine and specify the required size.
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