Provisioned Space onThick disks?

[ixoni]

I have thick provisioned my VM's yet most of them show provisioned space from 20% to 60% more than used space. The data store is 200GB over commited.  My understanding is that provisioned space comes into play with thin provisioned disks, not thick. Can someone explain to me why I have so much provisioned space?  We are on the very latest version of VMware.

Thanks!

[mcowger]

Snapshots are also counted here.

[nightnicon · Accepted solution]

The Provisioned storage icludes the VMDK for the disk, the vswap File etc its not just the disk.

For example if we have a VM with a 4 GB hard disk thick provisioned and it's windows 2008 R2 with 4 GB of RAM then the provisioned disk space will be around 8.11 GB

Used Storage will show 4.00 GB as thats the disk file. The rest of the provisioned space is primarily the 4 GB vswap file.

Fire up the VM and the provisioned storage changes to 8.05 as does the Used storage as it has now created the vswap files.

Power it off again and the provisioned storage changes to 8.12 GB and Used back down to 4 GB

The provisioned size has gone up .01 not 100 % sure why but could be the log file or something.

But that is why your space is 20 - 60 % higher than the disks it's the VM's RAM vswap file that it's accounting for in the total.

FYI changing the limits or shares does not affect the provisioned space as thats for the physical memory not the vswap file size.

The only way to reduce the provisioned space is either to reduce the hard drive VMDK size or reduce the RAM assigned to the VM.

drop the VM down to 2 GB and the provisioned space is now 6.05 when the VM is running.

[ixoni]

Thanks for a very clear and helpful explanation. Obviously, I am still in the early learning stage.