Hi All,
I am running into the reclaim space issue just recently and I am already beginning to be frustrated.
I will explain our situation.
We are running vSphere v6.0U2 and have thick provisioned LUNs (due to performance reasons) So running UNMAP has no use. Also svMotion has also no use as the default (and unchangeable0 block size of the VMFS. We also have a mix Virtual environment Windows and Linux.
So I read about zeroing free space using tools like sdelete(Windows) and dd or sfill (Linux).
But the thing I really don't understand is that either I am using the tools wrong or no one is concerned about filling up the whole space and that it is a really time eating process.
And no I am not zeroing a couple of GB I have to clear TBs...
Everyone is talking like it is something that takes some time but no harm will be done.. I am totally stressed out that I run out of space within my VM.
As the tool is using resources and eating up all my free space I have to run the tool during off-hours (which we do not have a lot) But I have no idea how long the tool will run and have not yet found any document how long the tool will take for like 1TB.
So maybe someone can explain me how to use these tools and give me a time estimate? I know time is depending on a lot of factors but I think an estimate can be used.
Further more I am running sdelete -z on windows and have done testing using sfill -f on Linux (Ubuntu) both machine having about 1,5 TB free space in the VM it self. All our VMs are thin provisioned. (one side note testing the Windows VM I have been following ashawa's way.
Many thanks in any insights..
Regards,
Ronald