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TheVMinator
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Determining unused space in virtual hard disks

I would like to determine the unused space in my virtual hard disks.  I would like to:

  • Select a vm
  • the first vmdk disk is always the OS disk in this environment.  How much space was provisioned, and how much is actually being used?

  • The other disk(s) are application data.  What is the total space provisioned on these non-os disks, and how much of this space is actually being used?

thanks!

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LucD
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Do you then get the results when you run this adapted version ?

Get-VM  |

Select Name,

  @{N="System disk capacity";E={

    $_.HardDisks | Where {$_.Name -eq "Hard disk 1"} |

    Select -ExpandProperty CapacityGB

  }},

  @{N="System disk used";E={

    $hdC = Get-VMGuest -VM $_ | %{$_.Guest.Disks} | Where {$_.Path -eq "C:\"}

    [math]::Round(($hdC.CapacityGB - $hdC.FreeSpaceGB),1)

  }},

  @{N="Other disks capacity";E={

    $_.HardDisks | Where {$_.Name -ne "Hard disk 1"} |

    Measure-Object -Property CapacityGB -Sum |

    Select -ExpandProperty Sum

  }},

  @{N="Other disks used";E={

    [math]::Round((Get-VMGuest -VM $_ | %{$_.Guest.Disks} | Where {$_.Path -ne "C:\"} | %{

      $_.CapacityGB - $_.FreeSpaceGB

    } | Measure-Object -Sum |

    select -ExpandProperty Sum),1)

  }}


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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LucD
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To see what is actually used you will have to be able to map the OS partitions to the vDisks.

And there is, afaik, no fool-proof way of doing that.

For example, inside the guest you can find out how much space is used on the D-partition, but there is no sure way to know on which vDisk the D-partition is located I'm afraid.

In some cases you could use the disksize you see inside the guest OS for a disk, to map it to a vDisk.

But if you have 2 vDisks of the same size, that will be much more difficult.

Arnim did a great post on this in his PowerCLI: Match VM and Windows harddisks – Part 2


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

TheVMinator
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OK thanks for the info.  But just to be clear:

- When I look in the vSphere client, it shows for each vmdk either "Harddisk 1" or "harddisk 2".  Since all the VMs were created from standard templates, I know my OS disk is always "Harddisk 1".  Is it not possible to pull the "harddisk 1" field using powercli, and select on that?  If I could do that, then I would always know I'm looking at an OS vmdk.

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LucD
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Yes, you can select on the harddiskname.

But the problem comes when you want to link this to the properties you have in $vm.Guest.Disks.

That data is collected by the VMware Tools inside the guest OS.

It will show the capacity and the freespace for partition C:, but it will not tell you which harddisk that is.

And you are correct, In your situation, the C partition will always be Hard disk 1.

But that doesn't work if you have more harddisks connected to the VM


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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TheVMinator
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OK thanks.  If I always know that even if my VM has 5 vmdks, that the OS disk is always the first one that was created, and that the OS disk is always on the "C:" partitition and therefore is always "harddisk 1", wouldn't I be able to select "harddisk 1" and calculate the provisioned size of the vmdk vs. the amount of data actually used?  I would know that that is the amount of data used by my OS vmdk right?

For the other harddisks, I'm not concerned about knowing what the windows partition letter is.  I know any other harddisk other than 1 is data, not OS.  So if I total all other harddisks other than "harddisk 1", I know I'm getting the total of my data.

Am I thinking correctly?

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LucD
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Correct, just remember you need to have the VMware Tools installed to be able to retrieve the disk usage.

You could do something like this

Get-VM  |
Select Name,
 
@{N="System disk capacity";E={
   
$_.HardDisks | Where {$_.Name -eq "Hard disk 1"} |
   
Select -ExpandProperty CapacityGB
  }}
,
 
@{N="System disk used";E={
   
$hdC = $_.Guest.Disks | Where {$_.Path -eq "C:\"}
    [
math]::Round(($hdC.CapacityGB - $hdC.FreeSpaceGB),1)
  }}
,
 
@{N="Other disks capacity";E={
   
$_.HardDisks | Where {$_.Name -ne "Hard disk 1"} |
   
Measure-Object -Property CapacityGB -Sum |
   
Select -ExpandProperty Sum
  }}
,
 
@{N="Other disks used";E={
    [
math]::Round(($_.Guest.Disks | Where {$_.Path -ne "C:\"} | %{
     
$_.CapacityGB - $_.FreeSpaceGB
    }
| Measure-Object -Sum |
   
select -ExpandProperty Sum),1)
  }}


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

TheVMinator
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OK thanks.  The only problem is that the system disk used column is blank for every vm when I run the report.  However, the "other disks used" has a value for every vm and is fine.  Any ideas on why this is?

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LucD
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Could it be that the Path property is not filled in correctly on your VMs ?

Do you see a C:\ path when you do this for one of the VMs that has a blank entry in that column ?

Get-VM -Name MyVM | %{

   $_.Guest.Disks

}


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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TheVMinator
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I ran the script you recommended using the name of a VM that has a blank field in "System Disk Used":

Get-VM -Name MyVM | %{

   $_.Guest.Disks

}

but it doesn't give any output at all.

If I run

get-vm -name MyVM | get-harddisk

It shows the filenames though

Any ideas?

Thanks again.

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TheVMinator
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(In fact the result is the same for every VM in the environment - none of them return a value for "system disk used")

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LucD
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And you have the VMware Tools installed and running on all these VMs ?


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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TheVMinator
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There are some that VMware tools are not installed on like some proprietary linux distributions.  But 95% have vmware tools installed and running.  However, of a set of over 100 vms,  none of them are able to pull the field though.

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LucD
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And I assume the following also returns nothing ?

Get-VM MyVM | Get-VMGuest | select -ExpandProperty Disks


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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TheVMinator
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Actually, when I do that it shows me capacityGB, FreepaceGB and Path, for both C:\ and d:\ partitions.

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LucD
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Do you then get the results when you run this adapted version ?

Get-VM  |

Select Name,

  @{N="System disk capacity";E={

    $_.HardDisks | Where {$_.Name -eq "Hard disk 1"} |

    Select -ExpandProperty CapacityGB

  }},

  @{N="System disk used";E={

    $hdC = Get-VMGuest -VM $_ | %{$_.Guest.Disks} | Where {$_.Path -eq "C:\"}

    [math]::Round(($hdC.CapacityGB - $hdC.FreeSpaceGB),1)

  }},

  @{N="Other disks capacity";E={

    $_.HardDisks | Where {$_.Name -ne "Hard disk 1"} |

    Measure-Object -Property CapacityGB -Sum |

    Select -ExpandProperty Sum

  }},

  @{N="Other disks used";E={

    [math]::Round((Get-VMGuest -VM $_ | %{$_.Guest.Disks} | Where {$_.Path -ne "C:\"} | %{

      $_.CapacityGB - $_.FreeSpaceGB

    } | Measure-Object -Sum |

    select -ExpandProperty Sum),1)

  }}


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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CarlosDionizio
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Hi Friends!

But if OS Guest is linux?  Smiley Wink

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LucD
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Then you would need to test if the Path is '/' or not.


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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TheVMinator
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I reformatted the report using the second version and it seems to be working now. This looks good thanks again!

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TheVMinator
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I had to make this tweak to the System disk used calculation to get it to work:

@{N="System Disk Used";E={  

     [math]::Round(($_.Guest.Disks | Where {$_.Path -eq "C:\"} | %{

     $_.CapacityGB - $_.FreeSpaceGB} |

     Measure-Object -Sum |   

     select -ExpandProperty Sum),1)

     }}

It seems to report the right result.  In this case, round() is outside of the calculation whereas in the version 2 code, round() was nested inside.

In this case, it seems it is doing a sum unnecessarily as there is only one c:\ disk. It seems to error out without the measure-object and the select -expandproperty though

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LucD
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Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

Glad you fixed the problem.


Blog: lucd.info  Twitter: @LucD22  Co-author PowerCLI Reference

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