VMware Cloud Community
CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

How to get rid of flat file

Hi All,

I've got a VM with a 4.2TB *_1-flat.vmdk file.


How do I get rid of this?

Thanks!

Tags (2)
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Hi,

Just an update: another engineer closer to the site went ahead & ran a P2V on the VM itself. The flat file disappeared as a result of this.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Craig

View solution in original post

Reply
0 Kudos
9 Replies
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

That's a virtual disk file which contains data. Are you certain you want to delete disk data?

CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

OK, is it a file that's continually in use? Or maybe has data that's not orphaned? Is there any way I can verify this?

Reply
0 Kudos
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

That file is the actual disk extent where data resides from one of your VMDKs. Do you have a VMDK that large provisioned on that VM? If so, this flat file is where all the data is stored. You cannot delete that file through any of the various GUIs unless you also delete the VMDK (descriptor) file. So if you're not absolutely sure what you're doing, don't go wantonly deleting files comprising a VM.

CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Thanks, and no I won't. It has just been brought to my attention and I hopped on here quickly to get some information which you have given me. I will check out and see what's going on with the provisioned disks and then reply back here.

Reply
0 Kudos
CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

OK, the disks are configured as follows:

* Hard disk 1 - 100GB (Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed)

* Hard Disk 2 - 950GB (Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed)

* Hard disk 3 - 1500GB (Thin Provision)

Thanks!

Reply
0 Kudos
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

Show a screenshot of your VM's configuration, and also run an ls -lh inside the home directory of that VM and paste the output to show all files in its directory.

Reply
0 Kudos
CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Thanks, how would I go about doing that?

Reply
0 Kudos
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

From an SSH session, change directories into this VM's directory and do ls -lh to show all files.

CraigV75
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Hi,

Just an update: another engineer closer to the site went ahead & ran a P2V on the VM itself. The flat file disappeared as a result of this.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Craig

Reply
0 Kudos