Provisioned Storage larger than allocated disk size

[rsduhamel]

I am using vSphere 4.1.0. I have a Windows Server 2003 guest that I provisioned for two hard disk drives, one at 80 GB and one at 250 GB, both thick. When I look at the settings this is what I see. However, looking at the guest summary it says "Provisioned Storage: 652 GB" and that appears to be what is used on the physical drive. Any ideas about what is going on here?

[aaronwsmith]

Does the VM have a one or more snapshots?  Those will provision but not consume additional disk space. Of course, snapshots will consume more space over time.

[rsduhamel]

No snapshots.

Don't know if it matters but this was a physical machine that I converted to a VM.

[a_p_]

The Snapshot Manager does not necessarily display all snapshots. Please either take a look at the VM's folder on the datastore to see whether it contains <vmname>-00000x.vmdk files or use e.g. RVTools (http://www.robware.net/) to get an overview. If there are snapshot which do not show up in the Snapshot Manager, you may create a new Snapshot and then use "Delete All" to get of them. Please make sure you have enough free disk space on the datastore in case the virtual disks are thin provisioned.

André

[rsduhamel]

Thanks Andre. Nice utility.

There is one snapshot that was made automatically when I converted the machine, but it's only 1 GB. I didn't create it myself so I assumed it didn't exist.

RVTools confirms the confusion. On the vInfo tab it says I have 667,728 MB Provisioned and 487,500 MB in use. On the vDisk tab it says the capacity of Hard disk 1 is 76,324 MB and Hard disk 2 is 256,000 MB. Once again, looking at the VM settings I have Hard disk 1 with a provisioned size of 74.53 GB and Hard disk 2 with a provisioned size of 250 GB.

I do have two vmdk files as you asked but I thought they were the virtual hard disks. If these are snapshots I don't recall making them. Where are the actual virtual disks? I don't see anything else using enough space.

I'm including a screenshot of my datastore in case someone can see something I'm missing.

[a_p_]

As you can see from the screenshot you have 4 virtual disks (.vmdk) files. Two of them are the base disks (the ones without "-000001" in their names) and the other two are snapshots. Since the provisioned size is empty for the base virtual disks, one can assume they are thick provisioned and it's save to delete the snapshots from the Snapshot Manager. Just create a new snapshot (to enable the "Delete All" button) and then click "Delete All" which will consolidate any existing snapshots, no matter whether or not they appear in the Snapshot Manager.

André

[mcowger]

Be aware - snapshots this large (in the hundreds of GBs) could require hours to *days* to consolidate depending on the speed of your storage.

[rsduhamel]

Thanks Andre.

Deleting the snapshot worked. I didn't know the snapshots had be taken and didn't understand the snapshot manager. Otherwise I could have probably figured this out myself.

to mcowger,

The progress bar sat at 95% for about four hours. I was mildly concerned.

Thanks for the quick responses.

Bob