NFS - Thin Provisioning

[Gooose]

Hi There,

I'm currently running ESX3.5 Update 4 in a development environment attached to a Netapp SAN, using NFS datastores.

I notice today that when I created a 20GB Virtual Machine, the Datastore only reported as to only approx 4GB being consumed, therefore I'm assuming

it's being thin provisioned.

Is there a way of not thin provisioning?

Many thanks

[vmroyale]

Hello.

The provisioning method is determined by the NFS server. As far as I know, this is going to be thin for NetApp. This is also assuming you use vCenter, the vi client or VMware Converter to originally create the disks.

One way of converting these disks, after the fact, would be to clone, SVMotion or cold migrate the VM (with the move storage option) the disk(s) within vCenter.

The vmkfstools utility can also be very useful in this situation.

Good Luck!

[AnatolyVilchins]

Not by default but try defraging or disk-testing your guest-disks/vmdks

from inside the guest, that's a good way of artificially 'blowing out'

a thin to fat.

from http://serverfault.com/questions/104569/nfs-thin-provisioning

Starwind Software Developer

www.starwindsoftware.com

[TobiasKracht]

From the man page to vmkfstools:<code><span class="pln"> 
</code>

<code><span class="pun">-<span class="pln">j<span class="pun">,<span class="pln"> <span class="pun">--<span class="pln">inflatedisk
<span class="typ">Convert<span class="pln"> a thin <span class="kwd">virtual<span class="pln"> disk to preallocated <span class="kwd">with<span class="pln"> the additional
     guarantee that any data on thin disk <span class="kwd">is<span class="pln"> preserved <span class="kwd">and<span class="pln"> any blocks
     that were <span class="kwd">not<span class="pln"> allocated <span class="kwd">get<span class="pln"> allocated <span class="kwd">and<span class="pln"> zeroed <span class="kwd">out<span class="pun">.<span class="pln"></code>

StarWind Software R&D

[Jasemccarty]

NetApp's using NFS thin provision by default.

If you want to ensure the vmdk to be thick (at the NetApp level), download sdelete from the Sysinternals site (now Microsoft).

Run a "sdelete -c C:" and it will "scrub" the drive of deleted data, with an end result of the disk being thick at the NFS volume level.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author: VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (ISBN:1420070274) Auerbach

Co-Author: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference (ISBN:0470520728) Sybex

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