Removing a VM did not reclaim the disk space

[griff6]

Hi,

I'm running ESXi 4 on a single server and I'd recently set up a small 4GB VM for testing.

I've now finished with it and in the VSphere client, chose the 'delete from disk' option. The VM disappeared from the VSphere client as expected, but the disk space was not recovered (there's about 4GB missing - the same size as the VM I removed).

I have one 'live' VM and could do with the space back, so I shut down the 'live' VM, and restarted the VM host too, but the space has not been recovered. Space usage is gradually creeping up (logs I suppose), so this will become more pressing...at some point.

I have SSH access to the host and I can see that the directory which previously contained the VM has gone.

How can I identify the files which the old VM was using?

Regards,

Griff

[AWo]

Welcome to the forums!

How long have you wait between deleting the guest and checking the disk space (with which tool)?

What does "vdf -h" show?

AWo
VCP / VMware vEXPERT 2009

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[griff6]

It's been a few days since I did the 'delete from disk'.

The vdf command isn't found. Is this command available on the free version?

Thanks for the quick reply!

[AWo]

Ups, sorry, I didn't get that this is ESXi

No that command is not available as ESXi has no console. Check this document for the rCLI commands: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_vcli.pdf

It should be the command: vmkfstools.pl <conn_options> --queryfs /vmfs/volumes/my_vmfs

AWo

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[griff6]

df -h:

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on

visorfs 266.4M 230.1M 36.3M 86% /

vmfs3 413.5G 409.8G 3.7G 99% /vmfs/volumes/4a546837-e7c58376-4474-001d0967cf92

vfat 4.0G 384.0k 4.0G 0% /vmfs/volumes/4a546836-c6abae9e-2f26-001d0967cf92

vfat 249.7M 72.1M 177.6M 29% /vmfs/volumes/8e377078-9378b97b-5af5-21628330905f

vfat 249.7M 4.0k 249.7M 0% /vmfs/volumes/f3824b7a-bf35f799-33cf-02f15fce932f

vfat 285.9M 230.2M 55.7M 81% /vmfs/volumes/c2a427e4-2d317086-fef9-b5750d88536c

The 4.0G volume jumps out as the possible culprit.

You'll notice I am very very short of space (aiming to migrate to a larger storage device any day now)...The space contains several old snapshots which remain on the disk, despite me no longer having Vcenter, but I suspect those will be harder to resolve and I'll raise separately.

[griff6]

I'll have that info in a mo...

[griff6]

Depending on what you're hoping I'll find, what should I use as 'my_vmfs'? Should I use the datastore name? I don't know the name of the volume which previously held the 'test vm' - although I'm sure it's possible to work out which one it is.

[jintoa]

After deleting the VM do a Datastore refresh from the VI client to get the new space available. Do you have snapshots?

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[wtellis]

Hi Griff,

Were you ever able to figure out what happened and how to fix it?  I seem to have run into the exact same problem.

-Wyatt

[Shakaal]

Hi Griff,

Would request you to upload the logs, I will have a look at them and will update you. Please refer to below KB article for generating the logs or run "vm-support" command  on the Command prompt.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/653

Thanks & Regards

[rickardnobel]

griff6 wrote:

The 4.0G volume jumps out as the possible culprit.

That is just the so called "scratch" partition, always 4 GB and is allocated at installation.