topic reclaming space in VMware Solutions Discussions

reclaming space

TDUBB1234 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:41:52 GMT

how do I reclaim space from a lun? df -V -h shows

esx_vol1 502GB 25GB volume

but I have already moved the vm off this lun

reclaming space

andrc — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:43:58 GMT

Space reclamation is explained in this document: http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3483.pdf

reclaming space

TDUBB1234 — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:26:39 GMT

is there a background process that reclaims unused volume space? my 500gb lun on vmware is empty but still shows 40gb used.

i do not have snapdrive so I cannot reclaim it with that

reclaming space

abuchmann — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:21:05 GMT

No, i don't think so, because the filer doesn't even know that esx has deleted the files on the datastore.

On most file systems(NTFS, FAT, ...), a delete operations just deletes the pointer in the inode-/fat-table, but not the data blocks. That's the reason why you need the space reclaimer to clear those data blocks (not in realtime) and report them to WAFL.

Re: reclaming space

TDUBB1234 — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:24:32 GMT

Re: reclaming space

neric — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:44:53 GMT

If your DS is empty and you need the space back, you could simply recreate it (destroy/provision).

Have you considered using NFS? It vastly simplifies many of these issues.

If you do not have the VSC (Virtual Storage Console) grab it off of the NOW site and install. It will help with the management of your virtual storage.

Re: reclaming space

TDUBB1234 — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:09:48 GMT

i am using FCP. not on NFS because worried about performance. I have the VSC installed but I am not seeing my datastore under netapp. netapp host discovery is queued.