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bunny101
Contributor
Contributor

Management question on VMFS field headings in C# client

Hello, all!

My management has a question on the way thick provisioned or thin provisioned machines are depicted on the Virtual Machines tab in the Datastores view in the C# client.

The two columns involved are the Provisioned Space and the Used Space.  He would like to know why the fields are filled as "xxx GB of xxx GB" and not simply "xxx GB" as in the VM settings.

Also, there seems to be some discrepancy in the way thick provisioned disks are listed.  We have some thick provisioned VMs with the Provisioned Space matching the Used Space, as expected - and a few where the Provisioned Space is double the VM Settings space.

Management wants to know how the Provisioned Space and Used Space are related.

I'm also looking into where a similar view is in the Web Client to contrast this and help Management understand why this is so.

Thanks for looking!

Gregg

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Please provide screen shots with examples, this might make it easier to explain.

... and a few where the Provisioned Space is double the VM Settings space

This usually indicates that the VM has an active snapshot.

André

PS: Do you know RVTools?

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Wh33ly
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Have a look at the documentation

vSphere Documentation Center

Provisioned Storage – Shows datastore space guaranteed to the virtual machine. The entire space might not be used by the virtual machine if it has disks in thin provisioned format. Other virtual machines can occupy any unused space.

Not-shared Storage – Shows datastore space occupied by the virtual machine and not shared with any other virtual machines.

Used Storage – Shows datastore space actually occupied by virtual machine files, including configuration and log files, snapshots, virtual disks, and so on. When the virtual machine is running, the used storage space also includes swap files.

Normally you'll see the amount of configured space in the VM as : Used Storage

The fact you see double VM settings space might relate to an snapshot, the VM needs to "guarantee" that at least each block can be changed so the disk space will be doubled (this doesn't mean it's actual double the space). If you remove the snapshot provisioned space will be reduced again.

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