topic Re: Nimble Recover Unused Space in Array Performance and Data Protection

Nimble Recover Unused Space

Tbrown1 — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 10:01:17 GMT

I recently deleted some VMs in Hyper-V and also deleted the specific vm hard disk file so I see the space freed up on the server, but when I log into the Nimble that volume is using the same amount of space it was before. I waited overnight figuring maybe there was a clean up job that would run and remove the data from the Nimble, but no luck. Is there something I'm missing here? How can I reclaim that space on the Nimble?

Re: Nimble Recover Unused Space

Mahesh202 — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 06:18:35 GMT

Hi Tbrown1

Thank you for reaching HPE

Starting with ESXi 6.5 with VMFS6 connects to a Nimble OS array of 3.6+, VMware will automatically UNMAP space deleted within VMFS. Further steps are not required; however, this process is not immediate and may take 24 hours or more.

Automatic UNMAP is asynchronous UNMAP., meaning space is not reclaimed as soon as you kick off the delete. If you want immediate results, your handy "esxcli storage vmfs unmap" command will do the trick.

Hope this helps.!!

Regards
Mahesh.

Re: Nimble Recover Unused Space

Thomas_Lam_HK — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 21:21:47 GMT

Is that volume contains snapshot? If yes then blocks are still locked and UNMAP can only be performed while all snapshots are expired.

Re: Nimble Recover Unused Space

Tbrown1 — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 16:41:32 GMT

Since this was using Hyper-V I needed to download and run sdelete via the command line so that the Nimble realized that there was actually free space available.