Sunday, May 15, 2011

How to reclaim Disk Space using Vmware Thin provisioning

If your drive is thick provisioned
You will need to use either Vmware Tools, Shrink or sdelete
Vmware tools Shrink
 
Sdelete
 
Then migrate to a new datastore.
Note: there is currently an issue where you will need to migrate to a new datastore with different block size.

If your drive is already thin provisioned
Vmware Tools Shrink isn’t available.
You will need to use sdelete to zero out disk then migrate to new datastore.
Warning: using sdelete will expand the thin provisioned disk to it’s full provisioned size so make sure you have enough space on the datastore free.
Note: there is currently an issue where you will need to migrate to a new datastore with different block size.

1 comment:

  1. Newer versions of SDELETE now use the following command:

    SDELETE -z C:\

    Check your command options with SDELETE /? to confirm which option you need to use.

    ReplyDelete