Virtual Machines filling datastore without logical reason

[lmaestro]

Hello,

I´m using VMware ESXi4 in a Dell PowerEdge R710 with 4x300 GB SAS 15.000 RPM in RAID 10. My datastore has available 552 GB for 7 Virtual Machines in a thin provisioning scheme of 200 GB per VM. Real usage of all my VM is near to 350 GB.

Unfortunately, today i looked for create a new VM, but failed because my datastore only have 1.3 GB free (551 GB used) and magically all my Virtual Machines take like 50-80 % more of space used. I didnt take Snapshots (it are being generated automatically?) and some days ago, it had 230 GB free. It could be any kind of Swap file´s filling the disk?

My df output:

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on

visorfs 215.9M 182.7M 33.2M 85% /

vfat 285.9M 230.2M 55.7M 81% /vmfs/volumes/c2a427e4-2d317086-fef9-b5750d88536c

vfat 249.7M 4.0k 249.7M 0% /vmfs/volumes/1408327a-20ca8217-0cd0-d0a01a13f9c8

vfat 249.7M 59.3M 190.4M 24% /vmfs/volumes/935cbc7a-9626488e-42ad-88ae72b5c9c1

vfat 4.0G 384.0k 4.0G 0% /vmfs/volumes/4a65ce69-e7e4e2bc-9611-0024e83316a1

vmfs3 552.8G 551.4G 1.3G 100% /vmfs/volumes/4a65ce69-61906d60-6f0f-0024e83316a1

I appreciate any suggest.

Thanks in advance

[srinivasvivek]

Check the datastores. Are there any templates or orphaned VMs left in the datastore. Check the virtual disks of all the VMs. Are they inflated for some reason? (say if you had run defrag inside guest)

Please mark if useful

[lmaestro]

Hi!

Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately, all my VM are LInux, and vm files are in thin provisioning, so, size of the image file is 200 GB (200 x 7) in a 552 GB datastore. Is it ok?

[srinivasvivek]

You mean 200x7 - 1400GB ? I think you have only 552 GB available. It's not advisable to over provision the storage in the guest when you don't have that much storage.

[lmaestro]

Yes, it is provisioned with 200 gb per VM, but real Usage is 300 gb as much.

For fix it, is recommendable convert from think to thick, is it possible?

[lmaestro]

This are some screenshots:

http://www.domahost.com/esxi1.png

http://www.domahost.com/esxi2.png

http://www.domahost.com/esxi3.png

And my output of VMDK:

/vmfs/volumes/4a65ce69-61906d60-6f0f-0024e83316a1 # ls -lashR |grep vmdk

108930048 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 10:27 BitaBlog-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 501 Aug 25 09:37 BitaBlog.vmdk

51991552 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 10:27 Bloquo Stats-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 502 Aug 24 13:04 Bloquo Stats.vmdk

40596480 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 10:27 OpenX-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 498 Aug 2 00:49 OpenX.vmdk

209597440 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 10:27 SYG_2-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 498 Aug 24 13:07 SYG_2.vmdk

60845056 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 10:27 VPS2-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 494 Aug 25 09:46 VPS2.vmdk

10104832 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 09:36 VPS6.int (DNS)-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 507 Aug 2 01:34 VPS6.int (DNS).vmdk

65766400 -rw------- 1 root root 200.0G Aug 25 10:27 VPS7.int (Email)-flat.vmdk

64 -rw------- 1 root root 506 Aug 25 09:37 VPS7.int (Email).vmdk

/vmfs/volumes/4a65ce69-61906d60-6f0f-0024e83316a1 #

[srinivasvivek]

Yes you can convert from thick to thin. Use VMware converter or you can do storage vMotion to some datastore and bring back as thick if you got license

[devzero]

what`s running inside the VMs? what apps and what filesystems?

[bulletprooffool]

You can convert thick to thin in vSphere using sVmotion, pretty simple process . . but even so . . 300GB allocated to each VM is a lot of space!

Does your storage do any deduplication?

[lmaestro]

Thank´s for the reply´s!

ALl my VM are Linux Centos 5.3 32/64 Bits with EXT3 filesystem.

[lmaestro]

Actually, my storage is using thin, not thick. I wish convert it to thick (because of oversized VM´s).

For a ESXI, is there any other solution like vmware converter?

[DSTAVERT]

With only 1.3 GB free space you don't have any options. You will need to move one of the VM's to some other storage. Once you have the freespace you can use converter to change the real size of the disk to something more reasonable. You have assigned 1400GB when you only have less than 600GB available. I would make them all much much much smaller.