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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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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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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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Our apologies, we commited an error, use:
du -h /path/to/your/file
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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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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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I tried the commands, and the "du" reports a smaller size:
Then your disk is thin.
closed!
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