NFS datastore issue

[Gooose]

Hi All,

Running ESX 3.5 update 2 and appear to be having an issue with NFS datastores.

Basically, when I create a datastore and then populate this with Virtual Machines, the datastore from the VI Client does not show as any data being consumed, however from the Netapp Filer, I see the data being used as expected.

Has anyone experienced this issue before?

[Rumple]

Are you seeing no space usage when looking at the ESX hosting using VIC vs Virtual Center?

Might just need the management agents on the host and/or VC service restarted so it picks up the changes

[FranckRookie]

Hi Gooose,

A few lessons we learnt working with NFS datastores on NetApp:

- virtual disks are created in thin format by default (no impact observed on performance). When you create them, they do not use the full space at the begining. It fills up with time.

- datastore available size observed in the VI Client depends on the Quota being enabled on the NetApp volume or not. If it is on, available size is calculated with the full size of the vmdk. When off, it uses the size really used on disks.

- if you have several Qtrees on a volume, and each Qtree is a datastore, the available space observed for each datastore is in fact the free space on the volume. If you create a new virtual disk on one datastore, remaining space on the others will decrease accordingly.

- if you enable deduplication on your NetApp and you have several vmdks on the same NFS datastore, it is hard to really know how much space each virtual disks really consumes ...

Overall, working with NFS datastores on NetApp is really a good solution.

Regards

Franck