ESX Thick to Thin still same size
I have a virtual server that was a 60gb thick disk. I used vmotion to move it to another datastore and changed it from thick to thin but its still 60gb on the datastore but inside the vm its only using 30gb of the 60gb disk. How can i get the vmdk to size down to just the used space like thin is suppose to work. This is on vmware ESX 4.0
Paul Solovyovsky
rescan the controller and/or refresh the VI Client.
ASKER
that makes no difference the size is still 60gb on the datastore.
was this machines HDD any time filled up to close to 60Gb?
ASKER
Yes its also a p2v.
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are you using NFS storage by chance?
as bgoering said. if it was full one time even if the files were deleted vmware may not be able to see any clear white spaces. defrag and zero the emprty space and try.
you could cat out the descriptor file to verify that the disk is actually supposed to be thin. It should have the line ddb.thinProvisioned = "1" within it. See http://virtualbox-provenpractice.blogspot.com/2009/04/thick-disk-to-thin-disk.html if you are unsure how to do this.
You should not even have to defrag (though that is not a bad idea for other reasons) if all you want to do is recover the physical disk space. If you do decide to defrag, do it before zero the unused space otherwise you will have used space wherever defrag moved files or file fragments around.
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Thanks so much that solved my issue.