Thin Provisioning on NFS server

[wobbe98]

Hi,

I've setup NFS server (Debian) for my ESXi4 server and I would like to do thin provisioning on this NFS server.

But when I create a new VM there is a message telling me that the allocation policy will be determined by the NFS server.

At the moment all my VM's that I create on this NFS server are "thick" so I want to know how I can setup the NFS server to allow for "thin' provisioning.

Regards,

WB

[GeorgeMahesh]

Yes, the allocation policy will be determined by the NFS server because we are not formatting the NFS datastore and maintaining metadata for the same as in VMFS.

VMFS will have the metadata for the actual data (beginning blocks and the ending blocks) and is able to allow VMs to have thin provisioned disks. NFS on the other hand sits as a file system on the storage array and maintains the metadata for the actual data on the storage array. So, NFS server dictates thin provisioning and therefore vmdks cannot be allocated space from the VM or VMFS.

[wobbe98]

FYI.

New VM's are infect thin provisioned.

The confusion came from the fact that when you do ls on the linux server it shows the vmdk file at it's full size.

If you do ls -lsh you also see the actual size in a separate colum.

Already exiting VM's that are beeing copied to and from the NFS are converted to thick.

So. Now I would like to find out if I can rsync a thin VM to another server and keeping it thin.

[dnetz · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Have you tried using the --sparse (or -S) flag to rsync? This should take care of thin provisioned files. An svmotion of the virtual machine after rsyncing should also work.

Hope it helps!

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[wobbe98]

the "--sparse" option works great. VM's stay thin and backups seem to be a bit faster. Thanks.