topic Re: How do you regain space from nimble array after deleting vms that are hosted by xenserver 6.02 in Application Integration

Regain Space from Nimble Array After Deleting VMs that are Hosted by XenServer

rodney garner — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 19:23:43 GMT

I've been deleting old vms from my Xenserver repositories that sits on a Nimble storage array. While my xenserver 6.02 storage repositories continue to get smaller the total space usage on my Nimble remains at 89.75%.

I've deleted about 1tb of vms and no change on the nimble array space usage.

Re: How do you regain space from nimble array after deleting vms that are hosted by xenserver 6.02

Nick_Dyer — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 19:54:19 GMT

Hi Rodney,

Unfortunately there is no way to "re-thin" a volume within XenServer 6.02 (in VMware the process is called SCSI UNMAP).

The best thing to do would be to create a new repository and XenMotion the VMs across, and delete the old one in order to reclaim the space.

Re: How do you regain space from nimble array after deleting vms that are hosted by xenserver 6.02

rodney garner — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 17:55:18 GMT

Thanks for your reply.

I was wondering if you know if the recently released Xenserver 6.5 which says it supports TRIM/Unmap commands to regain space would work with our Nimble CS210 with latest OS. I want to try and regain space without deleting repositories first due to storage constraints.

Re: Regain Space from Nimble Array After Deleting VMs that are Hosted by XenServer 6.02

Nick_Dyer — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 18:02:16 GMT

Hi Rodney,

Great question - I've sent the message into some folks at Nimble HQ, i'll post up what comes back.

Re: Regain Space from Nimble Array After Deleting VMs that are Hosted by XenServer 6.02

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 16:46:08 GMT

Yes with Xenserver 6.5 the TRIM support is been certified with CS family but you have to use the latest hotfix from Citrix http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX142141.

Re: Regain Space from Nimble Array After Deleting VMs that are Hosted by XenServer 6.02

rodney garner — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 16:48:24 GMT

Thanks for the update.

I will look into upgrading our Xenserver host to 6.5 and apply the hotfix.

Re: Regain Space from Nimble Array After Deleting VMs that are Hosted by XenServer 6.02

Nick_Dyer — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 16:49:00 GMT

Thank you for confirming, Rajesh!

Re: Regain Space from Nimble Array After Deleting VMs that are Hosted by XenServer

rodney garner — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 13:11:48 GMT

I did the upgrade from Xenserver 6.02 to Xenserver 6.5 and yes I was able to "regain freed space". I went from 90.5% space usage to 56% space usage in about 2 hours.

Thanks.