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#1 2019-10-15 07:09:04

michaelK
Member
From: Denmark
Registered: 2019-10-15
Posts: 3

Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

I have just installed the XSIBackup FREE and have made a few backups of some of my VMs.
All the VMs have Thin provisioned disks, so for example one has a disk set up as 250 GByte but actually uses 18 Gbyte of space in ESXi.
When XSIBackup makes the backup, it creates the *.vmdk disk as 250 GByte in size.
Am I using a wrong option when backup up?
The VM is shut down when I do the backup. The command to backup is:
/vmfs/volumes/part1/xsi-dir/xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/esxbackup --backup-type=custom ---backup-vms="Win10"

--- Edit

I have just noticed that when I browse the backup with the Datastore Browser from ESXi, then it shows approx. the same size as on the ESXi server.

Also, just for completeness, the backup point is a shared directory on a Synology NAS that has been mounted as NFS.

Last edited by michaelK (2019-10-15 09:49:32)

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#2 2019-10-15 18:11:15

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

Thin disks will always appear as their nominal size to most utilities. To find out whether the file is sparse or not use

2019-10-18 Corrected:

du -h /path/to/your/file

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#3 2019-10-18 13:15:05

michaelK
Member
From: Denmark
Registered: 2019-10-15
Posts: 3

Re: Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

Thanks for your reply, but that syntax seems not to Work on a Synology NAS.
I ran the "ls" command instead:

BUPNAS02> ls -l -h
-rw-------    1 admin    users     250.0G Oct 14 15:56 ALM Report Server-flat.vmdk
-rw-------    1 admin    users       8.5K Oct 14 15:47 ALM Report Server.nvram
-rw-------    1 admin    users        584 Oct 14 15:56 ALM Report Server.vmdk
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    users       2.5K Oct 14 15:47 ALM Report Server.vmsd
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    users       3.2K Oct 14 15:56 ALM Report Server.vmx
-rw-------    1 admin    users       3.1K Oct 14 15:47 ALM Report Server.vmxf

and you can see the file "ALM Report Server-flat.vmdk" is reported as 250GByte instead of the actual size of about 18 GByte.

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#4 2019-10-18 13:23:45

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

Our apologies, we commited an error, use:

du -h /path/to/your/file

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#5 2019-10-18 13:27:05

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

When you use a command like this:

/vmfs/volumes/part1/xsi-dir/xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/esxbackup --backup-type=custom ---backup-vms="Win10"

You are indeed using vmkfstools to perform the backup, and vmkfstools always uses thin format when invoked from (c)XSIBackup. Backup to a VMFS volume to find out whether the resulting disks are thin or not.

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#6 2019-10-18 13:58:46

michaelK
Member
From: Denmark
Registered: 2019-10-15
Posts: 3

Re: Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

Thanks,
I tried the commands, and the "du" reports a smaller size:
BUPNAS02> ls -l -h "/volume1/esxbackup/ALM Report Server"
-rw-------    1 admin    users     250.0G Oct 14 15:56 ALM Report Server-flat.vmdk
-rw-------    1 admin    users       8.5K Oct 14 15:47 ALM Report Server.nvram
-rw-------    1 admin    users        584 Oct 14 15:56 ALM Report Server.vmdk
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    users       2.5K Oct 14 15:47 ALM Report Server.vmsd
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    users       3.2K Oct 14 15:56 ALM Report Server.vmx
-rw-------    1 admin    users       3.1K Oct 14 15:47 ALM Report Server.vmxf
BUPNAS02> du -h "/volume1/esxbackup/ALM Report Server/ALM Report Server-flat.vmdk"
13.2G   /volume1/esxbackup/ALM Report Server/ALM Report Server-flat.vmdk

For that NAS I am not able to Mount to it another way because it is an older model.

----- Edit
I investigated further.
As you mentioned, it looks like a reporting issue. The actual size is really what "du" reports and not what the "ls" reports.

Last edited by michaelK (2019-10-18 14:02:59)

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#7 2019-10-18 14:12:53

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: Thin provisioned disks are allocated the full size

I tried the commands, and the "du" reports a smaller size:

Then your disk is thin.

closed!

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