ESXi, sdelete.exe and Storage vMotion

1 points · submitted Mar 2019 by u/bad_sysadmin · archived

I have a Windows 2012 virtual server which has some data disks that had a bunch of data on them that's been deleted.

So the VMDKs are much larger than they need to be.

I ran sdelete.exe -z <drive letter> to zero the free space.

I then did a storage migration from one volume to another and chose/kept the disk type as thin.

We're using a FC SAN.

I expected the destination VM to only be using the actual space used inside the VMDKs but they are the full size of the VMDK so I'm now using more space on the datastore.

I know I can power the VM off and run vmkfstools -k but I thought what I did should have reclaimed the space?

comments

eruffini 1 points · Mar 2019 · Senior Infrastructure Engineer

It would only reclaim space if the new LUN/datastore is of a different block size, typically.

You can either run it through the VMware vCenter Converter, or use vmkfstools like you mentioned.

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bad_sysadmin [OP] 1 points · Mar 2019

Ugh yes https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2004155

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