Lost Datastore Space After Failed OVF Deploy

[vmwareuserhere]

We have a standalone ESXi 6.5.0 server with 3TB datastore (VMFS 5.81).  I attempted to deploy an OVF package but it failed twice with a file not found error.  Before I attempted the deployments, I had over 900GB free.  Now I only have 750GB free in the datastore.  Is there a way to reclaim that space?

I've tried to execute "esxcli storage vmfs reclaim config get -l=mydatastore" but it fails stating that version VMFS5 doesn't support the unmap property.

Any help in the matter is much appreciated.

[daphnissov]

Check the datastore to see if some files were uploaded but never removed. I suspect this is what accounts for the missing space.

[vmwareuserhere]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I don't see anything with today's time stamp except the '.' and '..' directories.  Perhaps the following list of files and directories gives a clue:

drwxr-xr-t	1 root	root	3.0K Jan  3 16:25 .
drwxr-xr-x	1 root	root	512 Jan  3 17:54 ..
-r--------	1 root	root	17.3M Nov 13 20:02 .fbb.sf
-r--------	1 root	root	254.7M Nov 13 20:02 .fdc.sf
-r--------	1 root	root	1.1M Nov 13 20:02 .pb2.sf
-r--------	1 root	root	256.0M Nov 13 20:02 .pbc.sf
-r--------	1 root	root	250.6M Nov 13 20:02 .sbc.sf
drwx------	1 root	root	280 Nov 13 20:02 .sdd.sf
-r--------	1 root	root	4.0M Nov 13 20:02 .vh.sf

[daphnissov]

It would be in a directory named identical to the VM uploaded from the OVF. Does that or any variant thereof exist? Also, have you tried to just refresh datastore space from the client? You may also want to reboot the host. In some cases with local-only storage, I've seen inaccurate free space readings after certain types of aborted operations.

[admin]

can you tell me OVF file size which you trying to deploy....

Regards,

Randhir

[vmwareuserhere]

I saw nothing with the name of the OVF package in the directory.  I tried refreshing via the client but nothing changed.  I just followed your suggestion to reboot:  it now shows 840GB free.  It's not the over 900GB before the deployment attempts but it's a lot closer.  I'm not sure if I need to issue another reboot or just wait at this point.

[vmwareuserhere]

The OVF package folder is 720MB.

[daphnissov]

What is the version of your ESXi host client?

[vmwareuserhere]

client version 6.0.0

[vmwareuserhere]

Once all of the guest VMs had been started, the free space returned to the value I originally posted 750GB.

[daphnissov]

Since you're on 6.5, you should be using the built-in HTML5 client accessible in a browser from https://<FQDN>/ui. The legacy C# client tends to report strange things on 6.5, and it's not supported anyhow.

[vmwareuserhere]

Oh, ok.  I'll start using the web client.  In this instance, both clients are reporting the same free space figure.