reclaming space

[TDUBB1234]

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

[andrc]

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

[TDUBB1234]

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

[abuchmann]

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.

[neric]

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.

[TDUBB1234]

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.