reported disk space

[fafa24]

Dear All,

I have a question re reported disk space on the Vsphere Web client. Our environment is up to date with latest Vcenter Standard Server and ESXi servers. We use a Dell EqualLogic storage.

I have noticed that the reported used disk space on the vsphere web client is bigger than the disk space for the volumes I see on the EqualLogic. This is something which I don't really understand. I understand that when I delete a VM the space is not released on the Equalogic. For this I regularly run the esxcli unmap command to reclaim the disk space on the storage. It works without any problem.

However how it comes that Vsphere webclient reports that more storage is used than the Equalogic? For example I have a volume where the Equalogic reports 1.74TB is used and the Webclient that 2.07TB is used. Our volumes (we have 4) are 2TB each and one which is 2.5TB

Thanks,

Edy

[efanjo · Accepted solution]

Hi fafa24,

did you use thick vmdks on a thin datastore volume?

If you create a 100GB thick vmdk, this 100GB are reserved on the datastore. The EqualLogic reserves only the used space, the non-zero blocks, .

This is done through the VAAI feature.

Frequently Asked Questions for vStorage APIs for Array Integration (1021976) | VMware KB

[fafa24]

Thanks for your reply. Indeed for some VM I use thick provision and this explains the difference.

Thank you!