vSphere datastore details

[ChevUribe]

Hello all,

I would like to verify something regarding in the datastores view in vCenter

There is one LUN, that is presented to 2 clusters.

One cluster is 10 hosts with 100VMs and the other cluster is 8 hosts with 56 VMs.

LUN and remaining capacity is consistent if you look the datastore on both cluster.

but why is the provisioned space is different from the 2 cluster that if we add the two provisioned space result, it is more than the LUN size.

Thanks!

[ChevUribe]

up

[a_p_]

Provisioned space can easily exceed the physical disk space, because of e.g. thin provisioned virtual disks, and/or active snapshots, which are taken into account with their maximum possible sizes. Maybe you can provider some details (sizes) which may help to clarify things.

André

[ChevUribe]

One basic example is,

one LUN is presented to 2 clusters

LUN size is 10TB. LUN size and capacity remaining is the same if we check the same datastore on the two cluster.

We tried to populate cluster 1 while cluster 2 is still empty.

why does the provisioned capacity doesn't reflect on cluster 2?

even though with thin provisioning, the datastore details should be the same since even with provisioned capacity details. (2 cluster)

[a_p_]

Are the two clusters managed by different vCenter Server instances?

The provisioned space is the sum of space used by the managed objects, i.e. not the disk usage itself.

André

[ChevUribe]

it is managed by a single vcenter instance

[a_p_]

After reading some docs it looks like - which actually makes sense - that the provisioned disk space is object based, i.e. the provisioned disk space that's shown at the cluster level contains the information for only the cluster with it's child objects.

André

[ChevUribe]

if that's the case, will that be a dangerous approach?

what if on the two separate clusters, 2 administrators were tasked to monitor 1 cluster and is not allowed to access the other cluster.

if the provisioned space will not reflect on the two clusters, one administrator will be provisioning VMs without knowing that the other cluster is already full.

(This is given that a separate administrator monitors for the SAN storage).

Can we safely say that this is normal for VMware and a limitation?

or an update on the vCenter server or storage is needed?

I would like for other admins to verify this regardless of vSphere version if my observations are true.

[ChevUribe]

up!

any other ideas?