Can't Reclaim Space from Deleted ESXi Virtual Disk

[Shump]

Hello,

We are running VMware ESXi 6.5.0 (build 4887370). We had a virtual machine that had two virtual disks attached to it -- one that was 100 GB and one that was 1 TB.

We started to get low on disk space on the host, so I deleted the 1 TB drive. I verified that the drive no longer shows within the configuration, and also that it does not show as a drive within Windows any longer. I also made sure all snapshots were deleted and consolidated disks.

However, we are not getting the free space back. Our available space went up a bit, but not nearly by the amount it should. Also, if I browse the datastore, it still shows a virtual disk file of 805.54 GB, which does not match the size of either of the virtual disks actually.

Any suggestions on how I can address this would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

[daphnissov]

We started to get low on disk space on the host, so I deleted the 1 TB drive.

And how exactly did you go about performing this action?

[a_p_]

When you remove a virtual disk from a VM, you'll have the option to just remove the virtual disk from the configuration, or to "Remove from disk". Unless you select the remove from disk option, the .vmdk files will remain in place.

The .vmdk file size you mentioned, might be caused by the virtual disk's provisioning type (thin)!?

Please post a screenshot of what you see.

André

[Shump]

I did choose the option to delete the files from the disk when I deleted the virtual drive.

I am attaching a screenshot of what I see when I browse the datastore. The idx-staging.vmdk file is the first disk and shows as 100 GB in size.

The idx-staging_1.vmdk file is, I assume, the disk I was attempting to delete. It shows a size of 805.54 GB, which may have been a result of the thin provisioning not using the full 1 TB of storage.

You will also not there are a ton of idx-staging_1-0000##.vmdk files. Each of them shows as being 2 MB each. I do not know what those are. Currently, there are no snapshots and I have consolidated disks.

I can simply delete the 805.54 GB disk file, as well as each of the 2 MB files, but I want to make sure I am not going to mess something up first.

Thanks.

[Shump]

I used the Web-based GUI interface to the host machine. I selected the VM in question and clicked "Edit." I then selected the "X" to the right of the virtual disk, selected the "Delete files from datastore" option, and clicked "Save." The host reported that the action was completed successfully.

Thanks.

[a_p_]

The reason why the virtual disk files have not been delete yet, is that the VM has an active snapshot.

ESXi preserves the files to allow the option to revert to the snapshot. Unless you need the snapshot, delete it from the "Snapshot Manager" which should then remove the unnecessary files from the datastore.

André