Thin Provisioning Not Working As Expected

[hamm3r]

In my esxi 4.0 test environment, I have created a thin-provision xp-32 bit machine.

Thin provisioning was allocated at 50GB and is a minimal XP installation (just the OS, patches, vmware tools) leaving 44.7 GB Free.

The flat file hower, seems like it is thick provisioned.

I've searched every thread here and do not see any similar problems.

Am I missing something? I thought the vmdk file should only be around 5 GB for this, not 50...

I am not using vcenter, just the free esxi 4.0 download.

/vmfs/volumes/4afd5954-40f87539-4de3-001aa0a6e9a3/XP Pro SP3-Pristine # ls -al

drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1400 Nov 19 12:40 .

drwxr-xr-t 1 root root 2240 Nov 19 12:14 ..

-rw------- 1 root root 53687091200 Nov 19 12:40 XP Pro SP3-Pristine-flat.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 8684 Nov 19 12:40 XP Pro SP3-Pristine.nvram

-rw------- 1 root root 506 Nov 18 17:55 XP Pro SP3-Pristine.vmdk

-rw------- 1 root root 0 Nov 18 14:00 XP Pro SP3-Pristine.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2731 Nov 19 12:40 XP Pro SP3-Pristine.vmx

-rw------- 1 root root 1866 Nov 18 17:55 XP Pro SP3-Pristine.vmxf

-rw-rr 1 root root 230154 Nov 19 12:13 vmware-1.log

-rw-rr 1 root root 63177 Nov 19 12:40 vmware.log

[hstagner · Accepted solution]

Hello hamm3r,

What you are experiencing is normal. A regular list directory will show 50GB. You need to do a (disk/directory usage) query with the following:

du -ah *

That should show the real size of the vmdk file. You may also want to look at your Datastore's free space in the VI client to verify that it aligns with your expectations. I hope this helps.

Don't forget to mark this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner

[hamm3r]

Thanks for the reply.

I do not think du will work with esxi 4.0...but I understand your point.

When I view the free space through the vsphere client, it shows "correctly".

More info:

If I try to clone the guest using vmkfstools -i, it will say:

"Failed to clone disk : There is not enough space on the file system for the selected operation"

If the file where truely small, I would be able to clone the disk since the datastore has 61GB free and the guest is less than 5GB.

[hstagner]

Hello hamm3r,

Sorry, forgot it was esxi. Did you specify the disk format using the --diskformat or -d option? (The options are zeroedthick, thin, and eagerzeroedthick).

The default, if not specified, is zeroedthick (which means it will inflate your vmdk upon cloning). From the vSphere Command Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide pg. 59.

"The --diskformat option specifies the disk format for the copy. If you do not specify --diskformat, it
defaults to zeroedthick."

I hope this helps.

Don't forget to mark this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner

VCP3, VCP4

[hamm3r]

Great! You nailed it with the -d thin switch!

Thanks so much!