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jjohnsonclt
Contributor
Contributor

Thin Disk provisioning and wasted space

I am using ESXi4 and using thin disk provisioning.

I am confused as to how the vmdk file grows. For example, I have a Windows XP vm with a 20 GB disk and 13 gb free. But when I browse the datastore, the vmdk file shows up as 13 gb.

How can I shrink the size of this disk. Does fragmentation cause the disk to expand?

Also does a thin provisioned disk only grow and not contract when reducing the amount of data.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Jeff

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

Hello.

I am confused as to how the vmdk file grows. For example, I have a Windows XP vm with a 20 GB disk and 13 gb free. But when I browse the datastore, the vmdk file shows up as 13 gb.

The VMDK grows over time with usage by the guest, but when you free up space in the guest OS the space is not automatically reclaimed within the VMDK.

How can I shrink the size of this disk. Does fragmentation cause the disk to expand?

Duncan's Yellow Bricks has a good entry with some more info on shrinking the disks.

Also does a thin provisioned disk only grow and not contract when reducing the amount of data.

That is correct.

Good Luck!

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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jjohnsonclt
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the clarification. I defragged the disk and then ran sdelete -c c: and then it takes up the whole 20 gb now. Do I need to run vmware converter and move this to a different host to free up the space. I am running the free version of esxi and the disk is local and not on a SAN so I cant do a storage vmotion.

Am I correct in assuming that essentially to free up the space, you have to A) Zero out the disk which actually will max out the capacity first and then B) actually recreate the disk either by running vmware converter or storage vmotion (if I was running in a cluster)

On another note regarding vmware shrink. I dont have that option available in the vmware tools. It says not available because of not persisant yadda yadda.. The disk is an IDE disk and it wasnt persistent. I change it to persistant and it still wasnt available. Any ideas on this?

Thanks for the help

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