VCB backs up more data than VM partition has .... ??

[ascheale]

Hello,

we have ESX 3.5 U3 and VCB 1.5 backing up several vm´s over san.

Problem is we had one vm / partition /vmdk which had +400GB files for only one day. The 400GB are deleted ! Vcb fullbackup is still as big as it was with the 400GB´s. We rebooted vcb proxy but problem still exists.

What to do?

Alex

[VMmatty · Accepted solution]

I believe the option you're looking for is the "Shrink" option in the VMware Tools. That will take all of the space that was previously used inside the VM and mark the blocks with zeros. VCB will then consider it blank space again.

[kjb007]

If you've filled your thin provisioned disk, then removing the files does not automatically clear that space out again. Thin provisioning does not dynamically reclaim storage, it only adds more space as it needs up to the max of what it has allocated. Since you filled, you've allocated the additional space.

-KjB

[jguzmanr]

you issue is that a full vm backup backups up sectors that are not zeroed out. if you write to a sector on a vm and then delete the file, the sector still is non-zero, so it will still be backed up in a full vm backup. I've read that you can use sdelete to zero out the non used sectors but I haven't tried it, so don't take my word for it.

[VMmatty]

You can use sdelete to zero out the blocks if you want. Here is a nice blog post that gives an example of how to script the use of sdelete.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/01/04/vmware-consolidated-backup-and-deleted-files/

That said, if it is a simple one-off case then using the Shrink option in the VMware Tools should do the trick.

[ascheale]

One beer for all of you ! Thanks, that solved my problem.

Regards,

Alex