topic Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion in Active IQ Unified Manager Discussions

NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

PROCOPIUS1980 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:58:32 GMT

My appologies if this has been addressed before.

I have an NFS volume on my FAS2240 that does not reclaim disk space when I move a VM off via Storage vMotion. All other volumes do.

For Example:

Move 40GB VM from Saphire_Datastore to Gold_Datastore.

Volume free space prior to move:

Saphire - 108GB Gold - 328GB

Volume free space after move:

Saphire - 108GB Gold 290GB

I am relatively new to both VMware and NetApp storage, so I am unsure what direction to take. I have looked online, but most of the leads I have located relate to deleting VMs or reclaiming snapshot space.

Thanks,

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

PROCOPIUS1980 — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 15:25:03 GMT

Update: I just noticed in OnCommand System Manager that there are a group of tabs at the bottom of the Volume pane. The Saphire volume has 423GB of Snapshot data even though I have left the snapshot space at the default 5%. I guess it is safe to delete the larger snapshots, but I wonder why they would be so big in the first place. One snapshot is 256GB at was taken at 4:00 p.m. yesterday. It just happens that I was migrating a 250GB VM from Saphire to another datastore at about that time. Has anyone seen this type of behavior?

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

PROCOPIUS1980 — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:31:06 GMT

I believe I have figured out my issue: My snapshots were configured to run at the default times. One of those times is 4:00 p.m. The snapshot is so huge because the file was still in the process of being copied. Well, now I have a good reason to change those times!

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

RodrigoNascimento — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:45:02 GMT

You got the point!

😉

NAScimento

NetApp - Enjoy it!

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

aborzenkov — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 04:05:15 GMT

If you have 100GB of data, create snapshot and delete data, those 100GB are accounted to snapshot. That's how snapshots work ...

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

ASWINIKUMAR_REDDY — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 06:17:50 GMT

you don't want snapshots just go to the volume resize and

Snapshot reserve (%):00,

Then it will show, total allocated space as volume space.

Snapshot is working on copy on first write technology,so what ever may be updates happen it will take as snap that's why when you migrate the 250GB VM its taken entire snap.

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

ASWINIKUMAR_REDDY — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 06:35:55 GMT

Was your question answered correctly? If so, please remember to mark your question Answered when you get the correct answer and award points to the person providing the answer. This helps others searching for a similar issue.

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

RCHAUDRY1750 — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 16:31:41 GMT

Was this ever answered?

We have about 50GB of files that were deleted from a VOLUME over a month ago. THe problem is that none of the space seems to have been reclaimed. This is a netapp 250 running ontap 7.2.xx. It is used as an nfs server for a couple of Solaris boxes in out network

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

aborzenkov — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 03:43:17 GMT

Do you have snapshots on this volume? Check with "snap list".

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

RCHAUDRY1750 — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 18:38:20 GMT

yes they do use snapshots. Weird thing is when on the solaris hosts I do a du-h command on the .snapshop dir and it seems like it's as big (168GB) as the volume itself

netapp2>df -h

....

/vol/vMedia/ 200GB 170GB 29GB 85% /vol/vMedia/

/vol/vMedia/.snapshot 50GB 5705MB 44GB 11% /vol/vMedia/.snapshot

netapp2>

netapp2> snap list

Volume vMedia

working...

%/used %/total date name

---------- ---------- ------------ --------

0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Apr 04 09:26 netapp1(0084329016)_vMedia.1266 (snapmirror)

0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Apr 04 08:00 hourly.0

1% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Apr 04 00:00 nightly.0

1% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Apr 03 20:00 hourly.1

1% ( 0%) 1% ( 0%) Apr 03 16:00 hourly.2

1% ( 0%) 1% ( 0%) Apr 03 12:00 hourly.3

1% ( 0%) 1% ( 0%) Apr 03 08:00 hourly.4

2% ( 0%) 1% ( 0%) Apr 03 00:00 nightly.1

2% ( 0%) 1% ( 0%) Apr 02 20:00 hourly.5

3% ( 2%) 2% ( 1%) Mar 31 00:00 weekly.0

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

RCHAUDRY1750 — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 13:03:34 GMT

snap list output in above post

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

RCHAUDRY1750 — Fri, 23 May 2014 15:26:44 GMT

Any suggestions, guys?

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

DEF__HEAD — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 01:45:36 GMT

Just thought id add my experience in case anyone comes looking here to reclaim deleted blocks from the Windows O.S. in NFS mounts presented to VMWare. I was looking and researching for a while until I found Netapp VSC.

With the Netapp VSC plugin installed on VMWare virtual centre, this enables a reclaim space feature to VMWare. Running this process would power down the VM, reclaim the deleted logical blocks from the Windows OS, freeing them up on the storage array. When it automatically powers the VM back on the VM Used consumed space was decreased / true used.

Re: NFS Volume Space not reclaimed after Storage vMotion

ericgolan — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 07:39:08 GMT

Just want to explain this a bit more,

Its true you should put on NFS and CIFS snap reserve at 0% since higher number will cause you to save space for snapshots that can be use to data

example :

vol size 100mb

sharing with nfs or CIFS will give you 100mb

if you give snap reserve 5 this will make the system save 5% for snapshots not matter what ... meaning

users will see 95mb

if you put 0% users will see 100mb and you can still use snapshots (it will take space for the 100mb)

if you use 5% and snapshots take more then 5% it will take space from the remaing 95mb

as you can see snap reserve 0 make sense

just a side note : its not like this in LUN's

hope this explain abit more