Serious Wrong "Overprovisioned" Error on VSA 2014

[Bart_Heungens]

All the previous versions I know there were 'rumours', now it is shown on slides at VMworld... So lets hope indeed, lot of customers waiting for it... And recently with the firmware update on MSA that also supports space reclamation from day 1 at release, StoreVirtual must follow for sure...

[banaie]

Thanks to your discussion, I think I might know what made this problem for me.

We are using VMware Horizon View on the storage to give away virtual desktops.

As I know, it uses linked clones to save the space. Can it be the case when it creates the disk on the storage & deletes it, it doesn't delete from the storage & makes this problem?

Is there anyway to avoid this problem? Because, if it is the case, I think it would occur often for me.

[oikjn]

I"m not familiar with that so I can't say one way or the other, but if it writes to a new spot on the LUN and then deletes it and then writes to another new spot on the LUN and deletes it and rinse and repeat, it COULD cause a thin LUN to expand depending on how it was written.

You might want to check to see if there is a way to take advantage of the LUN clone feature of the SAN to make that function happen at the SAN level as snapshots and clones are almost always more efficient at that level.

Best thing to do is create a smaller LUN, test and monitor to find out what is going on, but make sure you don't overprovision until you know you have your disk growth under control.

For me, I have a couple VMs whose write profile just causes LUNs to expand to 100% capacity so I had to isolate them onto their own smaller LUNs that I know will consume 100% of their provisioning and then the rest of my LUNs all have been steady with their growth following almost exactly with what their actual data growth has been.  The trick at the beginning was identifying those expanding LUNs and limiting their max size before they consumed all SAN capacity.

[banaie]

Thanks a lot.

Now, I'm almost sure that the problem arises with thin provisioning for VMware Horizon View. Because, it uses space reclamation to save more space & as it doesn't work on the VSA, it makes the storage to expand.

As a proof for this statement, I have seen the vmware view usually initiates Wipe Flex-SE command on the storage from time to time. It should be the exact problem maker!

I think if I limit the storage for the vmware view to a limited storage that it can't expand so much, it should help me solve the problem & avoid it.

I'm really grateful for your porints specially you "oikjn". Thank you very much. You saved me from a lot of headaches.