Recover Storage from Deleted VMs

[jimvad]

I deleted a couple older VMs from our VSphere 6.5 repositories that sit on a Nimble storage array.  The total space usage on my Nimble remains though.  I've deleted a couple TB for sure, but have seen no change on the nimble array space usage.  Any ideas?  Thanks in advance!

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. Advisory: (Revised) HPE 3PAR Device Management Software - Attempting To Delete A Storage Container With Powered-On And Powered-Off VMs Deletes The VMs That Are Powered Off In HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console Versions 3.0 and 3.1

2. Cloning VMs or datastores from RMC-V Copies

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[sbhat09]

Hello @jimvad,

How much of physical space that deleted VM had occupied before? If it had occupied only logical space and minimal physical space, then you will not see much free space after deleting the VM.

If it had occupied considerable physical space, and you deleted the VM, the system will take some time to run the housekeeping jobs and release the free space.

Regards,
Srinivas Bhat

[Thomas_Lam_HK]

No sure you mean logical or physical space....

For logical space reduction, which is the volume consumption seen in GUI, we need to wait for host reclaim process kick in for free up those logical consumption.

And regarding to physcially free space (pool free space), do you have snapshot being taken on those volume?  As long as snapshot still retains blocks will still stored in array, until snapshot expired and Garbage Collection kicks in then free space will come back.  Or, if dedup is enabled,  blocks wiill also not be deleted as long as still having pointers referencing it.

[Vipin_S]

Hello Jimvad, 

Agreeing to above commets and more point to add here.

As the Nimble uses deduplication and compression on the volumes - you may not see large difference when you delete the VMs. 
Also have a look into the below link if your situation matches.
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-AC8E9C20-C05F-4FB5-A5DA-11D0A77A291B.html