But this time I wanna covered it a bit differently. Things I noticed:<\/p>\n
- \n
- A proper VM with VMtools installed, and thin provisioned will automatically shrink the overall size being shown and used on disk on the ESXi browser.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Yet for some reason after I used the SCP method to move a VM from one host to another (frowned upon as it secretly converts it from thin to thick). Yet even after migrating to a new datastore specifying thin, it still show as full disk usage on the host.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/FXYNsHN.png\")
<\/p>\nI know is less checking the VM itself via it’s console\/terminal whatever:<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/3YTjYvu.png\")
<\/p>\nIn my old blog post I mentioned “using DD” but not showing for stating how at all, Googling this I found this thread<\/a> with an interesting answer:<\/p>\n
“The \/zero-Tag is actually a file name. The command just copies zeros from the virtual File \/dev\/zero (infinite number of zeros) into \/mnt\/hdb\/zero until the disk is full, or some other error occurs.<\/p>\n
This is why you have to remove the file \/mnt\/hdb\/zero after that in order to regain the unused space.<\/p>\n
However, a better way to fill free space with zeros (on ext2,3,4 file systems) is to use a tool called zerofree.”<\/p>\n
Oooo zerofree?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/873xCtb.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHuh, something created (a tool) for exactly the task (job) at hand. Great!<\/p>\n
Error, how classic, complained path is mounted RW, like yeah and?<\/p>\n
Ughhh, google? virtualbox – zerofree on ubuntu 18.04 – Ask Ubuntu<\/a><\/p>\n
Step 1) Reboot into ubuntu recovery console, hold down [Perfect ESC keystroke]<\/p>\n
K how do I get into Advanced Grub boot? Holding Shift did nothing, if I mash ESC I get grub> (notices tiny flicker of Grub menu).. great I have to Mash ESC only once perfectly in a less then 1 second boot window… man give me a break… Once in I see advanced option as stated by the answer.<\/p>\n
Step 2) advanced options -> recovery mode -> root console<\/p>\n
Step 3) find the root directory<\/p>\n
mount | grep \"sda\"<\/pre>\n
Step 4) run zerofree<\/p>\n
echo \"u\" > \/proc\/sysrq-trigger\r\nmount \/dev\/mapper \/ -o remount,ro\r\nzerofree -v \/dev\/sda1<\/pre>\n
Step 5) reboot<\/p>\n
Checking the ESXi host… what it went up 2 gigs, da fuq man…<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/Q6P5t5f.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nStep 6) Compress Disk.<\/p>\n
In my previous post this was to vMotion to datastore or use holepunch option which from what I can tell this the -K option, which I dont’ think can be used on a live VM, and a storage vMotion can’t be done. without vCenter. Since I’m temp working without a vCenter server, let’s try the holepunch option, this will require shutting down the VM, but since the zerofree required it anyway down time was already in play.<\/p>\n
On the ESXi host:<\/p>\n
[root@Art-ESXi:~] vmkfstools -K \/vmfs\/volumes\/Art-Team\/VM1\/VM1.vmdk\r\nvmfsDisk: 1, rdmDisk: 0, blockSize: 1048576\r\nHole Punching: 100% done.<\/pre>\n
Oh noooo I’ve tainted my results… checking the web UI the space has gone back done to stating 20 Gigs like the first snippet… but doing a du -h on the flat file shows it is only the 10 Gigs as expected it to be:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/ykrk23k.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWell I don’t know what to make of this discrepancy…<\/p>\n
Huh, I found this post of someone doing the exact same thing around the time<\/a> I wrote my original post but simply used the command:<\/p>\n
dd bs=1M count=8192 if=\/dev\/zero of=zero<\/pre>\n
I have no clue how output file of zero means the disk… guess you can try that too, then holepunch the VMDK just like I did.<\/p>\n
There.. I shutdown the VM again and this time did my ol trick to vMotion a VM without vCenter,<\/a> and after re-registering the vMotion (between two datastores) it finally showed up with the correct space in the UI. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/eLEW1W6.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n