Reclaim Not Working on Equallogic Volumes?

Question

We have 3 different SAN vendors. On two of those SAN vendors the new esxcli unmap command with esxi 5.5 works fine. However, when running that command against volumes on the Equallogic arrays (thin provisioned volumes SAN side), the command never actually works. It completes without warning, but even after 24 hours, no volume space has been reclaimed.

I am hoping I can be provided with some insight?

The command I am using is the following:

esxcli --server=servername --username=root --password=password storage vmfs unmap --volume-label=san_volume

james_mjohnston · Answer

I'm having the same issue.

ESXi 5.5 installed on Cisco B200 M3 blades

vCenter 5.5

EqualLogic PS6000 and PS6110VX (3.5) storage arrays running v7.0.1 firmware

I've ran both commands and it doesn't seem to work.

vmkfstools -y /vmfs/volumes/SAN01/

esxcli storage vmfs unamp -l SAN01

the "vmkfstools -y" command has been deprecated and you can't specify a percentage. It automatically runs the unmap command in blocks of 200 (or says it does)

# vmkfstools -y /vmfs/volumes/SAN02/

Try to unmap 235104 blocks in units of 200 blocks from volume /vmfs/volumes/SAN02/.

Async unmapped 235085 blocks from volume /vmfs/volumes/SAN02/.

But EQL Group Mgr doesn't show the changes. I have a 600 GB LUN that is showing 100% used, but on VMware its showing 50% used. Do I need to expand the LUN so it can create the balloon file?

Thank you in advance.

james_mjohnston · Answer

ahh, that could be. I believe these were originally VMFS3 datastores and I upgraded to VMFS5.

Will do some testing on my side to make sure unmap is working (will recreate the volumes).

If it still doesn't work then I'll open a support case.

Thanks Don!

james_mjohnston · Answer

Thanks Don,

there are no snapshots and it is not replicated.

What I may do is move any virtual machines on that LUN to a newly created LUN and then just delete the older LUN that is showing 100% used.

Thanks again,

canada-it · Answer

I have been delayed in getting back to this. These volumes are not replicated, no snapshots exist. This is firmware 6.0x. This used to work fine in previous versions of ESXi (4.5 and 5.1). Since going to 5.5 with new unmap command is where it is no longer working, since we dont specify percentages any longer. These volumes are also native vmfs5.

I am running the command with the defaults which I believe is 200.

james_mjohnston · Answer

Just re-tested this on a native VMFS5 datastore.  Works beautifully!

crescendas · Answer

I have a volume that is almost full. The traditional method is to map the VMDK files into another VM and zeros up them in that VM (run sdelete in Windows on these drives etc) which is very time consuming.

The recommended method (if you have storage vMotion license) is to migrate all the VMs into a new EQL volume and delete the previous volume.

Since I have recently upgraded our vSphere 4.1 to 5.5, I would like to try out the command: esxcli storage vmfs unmap.

However, I'm got quite confused over what has been discussed above. How does VMFS3 and VMFS5 influence the process of reclaiming the deleted space? And what is the impact for VMFS5 upgraded from VMFS3 vs fresh VMFS5 volume? My EQL volumes are still in VMFS3. Must I upgrade them to VMFS5 first before executing "esxcli storage vmfs unmap"?

admiralfirebear · Answer

Hello. Thank you for the answer.

For me it doesn't work, and it could be because I have configured replication for the volume (i.e. requirement number 2 on your list is not satisfied). Must I remove replication for that volume temporarily and then re-configure it?

EqualLogic

Reclaim Not Working on Equallogic Volumes?

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