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XetroximynFlag for United States of America

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VMWare VM clone to thin provision appears thick - also vcenter shows wrong values for "provisioned/used" storage of source vm

I am cloning a 300GB VM that only has about 50GB used.  It is thick provisioned now, but in the clone settings, I told it to thin provision because I am moving it to an esxi server with limited space temporarily.  

It's cloning right now, and it seems like it is cloning thick provisioned, as the file it created on the target machine is the full 300GB even though it should be thin provision and it is in the middle of the clone.

Also a little strangeness - if I look at the current VM in vcenter I can see it has 300GB allocated think.  However if I click on the esxi host and then click the vm's tab, there it says that 600GB is provisioned to that vm and 300GB is in use... which is totally wrong... (attaching screenshots of this)

Any idea what might be going on here?

Here are some helpful outputs...

df from inside the VM to show what is really used.
# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_dialer-lv_root
                       50G   11G   36G  24% /
tmpfs                  12G     0   12G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             477M   78M  374M  18% /boot
/dev/mapper/vg_dialer-lv_home
                       48G   31G   16G  67% /home
/dev/mapper/vg_dialer-lv_tmp
                       48G  1.4G   45G   4% /tmp
/dev/mapper/vg_dialer-lv_var
                       96G  1.2G   90G   2% /var

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listing of the vm directory on the source esxi server where the vm is being copied from
ls -l
total 345810960
-rw-------    1 root     root       4964864 Aug 22 17:13 survox-dialer-000001-ctk.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root     2768863232 Aug 22 18:29 survox-dialer-000001-delta.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root           402 Aug 22 17:13 survox-dialer-000001.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root         19959 Aug 22 17:12 survox-dialer-Snapshot52.vmsn
-rw-------    1 root     root     25769803776 Aug 22 09:14 survox-dialer-b6b5c472.vswp
-rw-------    1 root     root       4964864 Aug 22 17:12 survox-dialer-ctk.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root     325343772672 Aug 22 17:12 survox-dialer-flat.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root          8684 Aug 22 18:20 survox-dialer.nvram
-rw-------    1 root     root           565 Aug 22 09:14 survox-dialer.vmdk
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           568 Aug 22 17:13 survox-dialer.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          2937 Aug 22 17:13 survox-dialer.vmx
-rw-------    1 root     root             0 Aug 22 09:14 survox-dialer.vmx.lck
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          2930 Aug 22 17:13 survox-dialer.vmx~
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        247675 Jan  9  2018 vmware-1.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        244297 Jan  9  2018 vmware-2.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        242800 Jan 11  2018 vmware-3.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        196414 Feb  2  2018 vmware-4.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        196585 Mar  2 02:11 vmware-5.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       1546039 Aug 22 00:51 vmware-6.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        179685 Aug 22 18:27 vmware.log
-rw-------    1 root     root     206569472 Aug 22 09:14 vmx-survox-dialer-3065365618-1.vswp

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listing of the vm directory on the target esxi server (i.e. it's part way through cloning to here)
ls -l
total 317718528
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           556 Aug 22 22:02 survox-dialer-2018-08-22-esxi1-4cc61e8f.hlog
-rw-------    1 root     root     325343772672 Aug 22 23:15 survox-dialer-2018-08-22-esxi1-flat.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root           576 Aug 22 22:02 survox-dialer-2018-08-22-esxi1.vmdk

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vm-has-303GB-provisioned.png
wrong-values.png
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Patrick
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What type of datastore ? Is it a vSAN?
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ASKER

So once the clone finished, it went to thin provision - also the source esxi server stopped showing double the amount allocated.  I guess it was all a temporary strangeness around the clone being in progress.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Xetroximyn
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