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VDI space reclamation on XtremIo
We are in the planning stages of deploying a VDI solution on XtremIO using Horizon. We have been given some conflicting information regarding space reclamation. Is it still best practice to use the VSI plugin for space reclamation or is that no longer required? Would like to see some documentation on it as the latest I can find only addresses XtremIO v3.0.
Thanks.
Kumar_A
727 Posts
1
July 14th, 2016 19:00
Space reclamation has nothing to do with dedupe and compression on XtremIO. In fact, it has nothing to do with XtremIO (or any other storage).
If you delete something from the host side, you need to send a space reclamation command to the storage - some operating systems do it by default (windows) and some don't (VMware).
Because XtremIO is a content aware storage, one manual work around that will always work is writing zeroes to the deleted space. When you write zeroes from the host, XtremIO will identify it and we reclaim the storage corresponding to that area where the zero was written.
Kumar_A
727 Posts
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July 7th, 2016 14:00
Space reclamation still needs to be done – both at the datastore level and within the guest. You can either do it manually or automate the datastore level space reclamation through the VSI plugin. You should be able to see documentation for this in the user guide for VSI plugin.
VMware has added support for automated space reclamation for some specific scenarios, but other than that you need to make sure that the space reclamation is being done somehow.
hengineer
1 Message
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July 14th, 2016 11:00
As AVI has some great points above.
Check compatibility with your Guest OS, Host OS, and any other technology inline with your XIO (ie VPLEX). Test test test your use case and determine how "bad" the reclaim will be and how automated you can make the process. I'd imagine with VDI and linked clones, it won't be very bad especially with deduplication and compression.
Anthony_Mannix
6 Posts
1
July 15th, 2016 07:00
You can view the latest XtremIO Host Configuration Guide if you search (Product Scope: XtremIO -- Resource Scope: Documentation) at Search EMC Support for ' XtremIO Host Guide':
https://support.emc.com/search/
From page 67 - 69 it gives you details on space reclaim from a Guest and ESX level.
To answer your question, there is no best practice outlined to have the VSI plugin installed.
There are two types of VDI provisioning that differ by their space reclamation guidelines:
- Temporary desktop (Linked Clones) - Normally, temporary desktops are deleted once the end users log off. Therefore, running space reclamation on the guest OS is not relevant, and only ESX level space reclamation should be used.
- Persistent desktop (Full Clones) - Persistent desktop contains long-term user data. Therefore, space reclamation should be run on guest OS level first, and only then on ESX level.
Hope this helps.
Kumar_A
727 Posts
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July 15th, 2016 08:00
And as mentioned earlier, VSI plugin can help automate the space reclamation at the ESX level.
topfrog1
2 Posts
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July 15th, 2016 09:00
Thanks for the reply's. I will look into the plugin further.