Reclaim Space in a VM on thin or thick VMDKs

There are many different scenarios where this comes into play, and there many different ways to get the desired results.

Scenario 1: Reclaim unused space from a thick disk

Solution 1:

Storage vMotion the VM to another datastore and convert it to thin. See the following link on how to do that: Blocksize Impact.

Solution 2

Use VMware Converter and do a V2V of the VM and choose Thin for the destination disk type.

Scenario 2: Reclaim previously used space from a thick disk

WINDOWS

Solution 1:**

When this happens we need to reclaim the deleted space using sdelete, which will just zero out the deleted space. The page Reclaim disk space from Thin Provisioned disks talks about how to do that. So first zero out the deleted space with sdelete and then use storage vMotion to convert the disk to thin.

Solution 2

You can also use the shrink disk from vmware tools to reclaim the delete space. More information can be seen here ‘Storage VMotion and moving to a Thin Provisioned disk’.

Solution 3

Use VMware Converter and do a P2V of the VM. The post ‘P2V with VMware Converter Standalone 5 and sync feature’ has a good video on how to do that. Make sure you choose thin for the disk type.

LINUX

Solution 1

It’s almost the same as the “Windows Scenario” but instead of using sdelete you can use zerofree. So install zerofree:

Fedora/CentOs/RedHat

[root@rac1 ~]$ yum install zerofree
updates/metalink | 12 kB 00:00
updates | 4.5 kB 00:00
updates/primary_db | 4.3 MB 00:21
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
Running transaction check
Package zerofree.i686 0:1.0.1-8.fc15 will be installed
Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================================================
Installing:
zerofree i686 1.0.1-8.fc15 fedora 20 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install 1 Package

Total download size: 20 k
Installed size: 20 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
zerofree-1.0.1-8.fc15.i686.rpm | 20 kB 00:00
Running Transaction Check
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing : zerofree-1.0.1-8.fc15.i686 1/1

Installed:
zerofree.i686 0:1.0.1-8.fc15

Complete!

For Debian/Ubuntu

[root@rac1 ~]$ apt-get install zerofree
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
zerofree
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 17 not upgraded.
Need to get 7,272 B of archives.
After this operation, 61.4 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe zerofree amd64 1.0.1-2ubuntu1 [7,272 B]
Fetched 7,272 B in 0s (41.5 kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package zerofree.
(Reading database ... 22748 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking zerofree (from .../zerofree_1.0.1-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up zerofree (1.0.1-2ubuntu1) ...

Then you need to mount the partition as read-only and run zerofree on it. If you need perform this on your OS/root partition, then power off your VM and attach the OS disk to another Linux VM. Here is how it looks like:

[root@rac1 ~]$ mount -o remount,ro /dev/mapper/test-lvol0
[root@rac1 ~]$ zerofree -v /dev/mapper/test-lvol0
1106/485301/512000

Then Storage vMotion the VM to another datastore with another block size converting the disk to thin.

NOTE: Instead of using rm to delete files, you can use shred and then you wouldn’t need to zero out deleted space.

Solution 2

Use VMware Converter and do a P2V of the VM. The post P2V with VMware Converter Standalone 5 and sync feature has a good video on how to do that. Make sure you choose thin for the disk type.

Scenario 3: Reclaim previously used space from thin disks

Solution 1

If you using windows, use sDelete to reclaim the space and then SvMotion to keep the disk format. If using Linux, use zerofree to reclaim the space and then SvMotion to another datastore with another block size keeping the disk format

Solution 2

Use VMware Converter and P2V the VM. Ensure you use the thin disk.