What Is Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed?
In this article, we are going to lớn consider the storage pre-allocation aspect of virtual disk settings in detail and find out what thiông chồng & thin provisioning are, how they differ, và which of these storage pre-allocation types is better for your infrastructure.
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Thiông chồng Provisioning
Thiông chồng provisioning is a type of storage pre-allocation. With thick provisioning, the complete amount of virtual disk storage capađô thị is pre-allocated on the physical storage when the virtual disk is created. A thick-provisioned virtual disk consumes all the space allocated to it in the datastore right from the start, so the space is unavailable for use by other virtual machines.
There are two sub-types of thick-provisioned virtual disks:
A Lazy zeroed disk is a disk that takes all of its space at the time of its creation, but this space may contain some old data on the physical truyền thông. This old data is not erased or written over, so it needs lớn be "zeroed out" before new data can be written to the blocks. This type of disk can be created more quickly, but its performance will be lower for the first writes due to lớn the increased IOPS (input/output operations per second) for new blocks; An Eager zeroed disk is a disk that gets all of the required space still at the time of its creation, & the space is wiped clean of any previous data on the physical truyền thông. Creating eager zeroed disks takes longer, because zeroes are written khổng lồ the entire disk, but their performance is faster during the first writes. This sub-type of thick-provisioned virtual disk supports clustering features, such as fault tolerance.
For data security reasons, eager zeroing is more comtháng than lazy zeroing with thick-provisioned virtual disks. Why? When you delete a VMDK, the data on the datastore is not totally erased; the blocks are simply marked as available, until the operating system overwrites them. If you create an eager zeroed virtual disk on this datastore, the disk area will be totally erased (i.e., zeroed), thus preventing anyone with bad intentions from being able to recover the previous data – even if they use specialized third-tiệc ngọt software.
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Thin Provisioning
Thin provisioning is another type of storage pre-allocation. A thin-provisioned virtual disk consumes only the space that it needs initially, và grows with time according khổng lồ demvà.
For example, if you create a new thin-provisioned 30GB virtual disk và copy 10 GB of files to it, the form size of the resulting VMDK tệp tin will be 10 GB, whereas you would have a 30GB VMDK file if you had chosen lớn use a thick-provisioned disk.
Thin-provisioned virtual disks are quick to create và useful for saving storage space. The performance of a thin-provisioned disk is not higher than that of a lazy zeroed thick-provisioned disk, because for both of these disk types, zeroes have to be written before writing data to lớn a new blochồng. cảnh báo that when you delete your data from a thin-provisioned virtual disk, the disk form size is not reduced automatically. This is because the operating system deletes only the indexes from the tệp tin table that refer to the file toàn thân in the tệp tin system; it marks the blocks that belonged to lớn "deleted" files as miễn phí and accessible for new data to be written onlớn. This is why we see tệp tin removal as instant. If it were a full deletion, where zeroes were written over the blocks that the deleted files occupied, it would take about the same amount of time as copying the files in question. See the simplified illustration below.
Issues That May Occur When Using Thin-Provisioned Virtual Disks
Using thin-provisioned virtual disks is not always smooth. There are some issues that you should be aware of và prepared to khuyễn mãi giảm giá with.
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Let’s consider an example that renders the virtual machines unusable. For example, we have sầu a 20GB datastore with three virtual machines running on it. Each virtual machine has a thin-provisioned virtual disk set with a maximum kích cỡ of 10 GB. (This practice is called "overprovisioning" – we assign virtual disks more space than they can physically take up. This is done often, as it allows you khổng lồ scale the system by adding more physical storage as you need it.) The tệp tin size of each virtual disk will expvà as data is added, until there is no không tính phí space left on the datastore. The situation becomes critical when there is only 1GB of không tính tiền space left on the datastore, as when, for example, VM1 occupies 8 GB, VM2 occupies 7 GB, và VM3 - 4 GB.
Regular methods of tệp tin deletion within virtual machines will not help shrink the thin-provisioned virtual disks. If more than 1 GB of new data is written to lớn any of these virtual machines, all three of them will fail, and you will need to migrate one or more of the virtual machines khổng lồ another datastore to restore their running states.
How to lớn Reduce the Size of Thin-Provisioned Virtual Disk After Deleting Files
To be able lớn reduce the VMDK tệp tin form size of your thin-provisioned virtual disks, you need to know how to lớn zero the blocks that the data you deleted previously occupied. Let’s find out how to vị that.
NOTE: Disk shrinking operations are only possible if the virtual machines bởi not contain snapshots. Also, please be attentive sầu & exexinh đẹp commands at your own responsibility. Always baông xã up all of your important data before carrying out any disk operations. To back up your VMware & Hyper-V virtual machines, use lotobamien.com Backup & Replication.
Shrinking Thin-Provisioned VMware Disks in Linux
Let’s consider an example: we have a 10,266,496 KB (10GB) VMDK file (we learned about its form size by going lớn the directory on the datastore where our virtual machine is located) & want to lớn shrink the virtual disk on which the guest Linux OS is installed. We can try to lớn delete unnecessary files on this virtual disk. However, Linux does not automatically zero blocks after deleting files; you will have lớn vì this yourself. You can vì this by using the dd (data duplicator) utility for copying and converting data. This tool is available on all Linux systems.
NOTE: Before running the dd utility, it is necessary to make sure the datastore has enough capađô thị to use it (e.g., for ESXi VPS, you can check the storage capađô thị in the storage section of the vSphere client – go to Configuration >> Storage).
Let’s use the dd utility.
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root
test-virtual-machine:/# df -h We get the following output in the console:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on udev 469M 0 469M 0% /dev tmpfs 99M 6,3M 92M 7% /run /dev/sda7 17G 8,8G 6,4G 58% / tmpfs 491M 116K 491M 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 5,0M 4,0K 5,0M 1% /run/loông chồng tmpfs 491M 0 491M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/sda1 945M 121M 760M 14% /boot /dev/sda6 3,7G 13M 3,5G 1% /var/log tmpfs 99M 36K 99M 1% /run/user/1000 We can see from this output that the / (root) partition contains 8.8 GB of files. Let’s delete a few gigabytes of unnecessary files in the root partition. This is what we see in the console, if we run the df -h / command: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda7 17G 4,7G 11G 31% / Thus, our root partition now contains 4.7 GB of files. However, going to the directory where our VMDK file is located, we can see that its kích thước is still 10,266,496 KB (10 GB). Now we are going khổng lồ fill the free space with zeroes (in our case, we’ll fill 10 GB out of 11 GB available). First, we type cd followed by the name of the directory that the partition that needs khổng lồ be zeroed out is mounted lớn (in our case it is cd /, because we want to navigate khổng lồ the root partition). After that, we run the following comm&, changing the variables to lớn suit our needs: dd bs=1M count=10240 if=/dev/zero of=zero In this command:
- dd can only be run as super user.
- bs sets the bloông xã form size (for example, bs=1M would give sầu you a 1-Megabyte bloông chồng size).
- count specifies the number of blocks khổng lồ be copied (the mặc định is for dd to lớn keep going forever or until the input runs out). In our case, 10,240 MB is the amount of free space that we want to fill with zeroes, so the number of 1-Megabyte blocks is 10240.
- if stands for "input đầu vào file". This is where you should indicate the source from which you want to lớn copy data. In our case, it is /dev/zero – a special file (a pseudo-device) that provides as many null characters as you want khổng lồ read from it.
- of stands for "output file". This is where you phối the destination where you want khổng lồ write/paste your data (in our case, the name of the file is zero).
After executing the above sầu comm&, the size of our VMDK file grows. This is the output we see after the successfully completed command:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda7 17G 15G 569M 97% / This means that almost the whole root partition (i.e., 97%) is occupied. This is because we have sầu filled most of the previously "available" space with zeroes. Now, our thin-provisioned virtual disk is ready lớn be shrunk.
NOTE: To persize shrinking, it is necessary to lớn install VMware Tools. For virtual machines that are running on VMware ESXi or VMware Workstation, we exedễ thương the following two commands in the Linux guest OS.a) To make sure that the disk partition is available, we run the command: root
test-virtual-machine:/# vmware-toolbox-cmd disk danh sách This is the output we see in our case (i.e., we see the các mục of available partitions):
/ /boot /var/log The root partition is present, so we can proceed.
b) To shrink the partition, we run the following command:
root
test-virtual-machine:/# vmware-toolbox-cmd disk shrink / This is the output we see in our case:
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Shrinking Thin-Provisioned VMware Disks in Windows
Like Linux, Windows does not automatically zero blocks after deleting files. To be able khổng lồ zero the không tính phí space of the target disks on your Windows virtual machine, you need khổng lồ tải về SDelete – a không tính phí utility from the Microsoft’s Sysinternals Suite – & unzip the files from the downloaded archive to c:program filessdelete.
Then follow these steps:
Run cmd. Go to lớn the directory where SDelete is located. In our case, it is:cd c:program filessdelete For each partition in the console, use the sdelete -z comm&. This is what we have sầu in our case:sdelete -z c: sdelete -z d: These commands will zero out any không lấy phí space on your thin-provisioned disk by filling in any unused space on the specified partitions.
Wait a couple of minutes until the process is finished. Your VMDK file will expand lớn its maximum form size during the process. Make sure VMware Tools are installed on your Windows virtual machine. By default, VMware Tools are installed khổng lồ c:program filesvmwarevmware tools. Navigate lớn this directory by typing: cd c:program filesvmwarevmware tools. To view the available disk partitions, type:vmwaretoolboxcmd disk các mục Shrink the disk partitions that you need. In our case, we ran the commands: vmwaretoolboxcmd disk shrink c: vmwaretoolboxcmd disk shrink d: Wait until the program has finished shrinking the disk. You can use this method for virtual machines that are running on VMware ESXi or VMware Workstation.
VMware Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler
Above, we mentioned a solution khổng lồ shrink thin-provisioned disks manually. However, there is one more way lớn manage your virtual disks (both thin-provisioned and thick-provisioned), if you use a datastore cluster in vSphere. VMware provides automatic virtual disk migration within the datastore cluster khổng lồ avoid overflow of disk storage where thin-provisioned virtual disks are located and lớn balance I/O resources. If you have more than one shared datastore mounted khổng lồ the ESXi server, you can mix up the Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (Storage DRS). Storage DRS is an intelligent vCenter Server feature for efficiently managing VMFS và NFS storage that provides automatic virtual machine disk placement & migration. You can also mix Storage DRS khổng lồ manual mode if you prefer lớn approve migration recommendations manually.
Follow these steps to enable Storage DRS:
Navigate lớn the datastore cluster in the vSphere Web Client. Go to lớn vCenter >> Datastore Clusters. Select your datastore cluster and clichồng Manage >> Settings >> Services >> Storage DRS. Cliông xã Edit. Configure the automation settings, I/O-related functions, và advanced options that you need.Xem thêm: Nhịp Là Gì Phách Là Gì - Số Chỉ Nhịp Và Ví Dụ Về Số Chỉ Nhịp
If there are no datastore clusters in your vSphere environment, follow these steps khổng lồ create và mix up a new datastore cluster:
Navigate to lớn vCenter >> Datacenters in the vSphere Web Client. Right-clichồng on your Datacenter & select New Datastore Cluster. Enter the name of your datastore cluster and tick the checkbox near "Turn On Storage DRS". Select the automation settings, I/O-related functions, and advanced options that you need. Cliông chồng OK khổng lồ finish.Conclusion
In this blog post, we have considered the types of virtual disks & weighed the advantages and disadvantages of each in order khổng lồ better underst& the differences between thiông xã và thin provisioning. Eager zeroed thick-provisioned disks are the best for performance & security, but require enough không lấy phí storage space và take a lot of time to lớn be created. Lazy zeroed thick-provision disks are good for their short creation times, but they bởi not provide as much tốc độ as eager zeroed disks vì, & are less secure. Thin-provisioned disks are the best choice to save sầu datastore space at the moment of disk creation. You can create a virtual disk with a greater maximum size than the physical space you have available (“overprovisioning”) & add more physical storage in the future, but remember that if the physical disk space fills up and the thin-provisioned disk cannot grow to lớn accommodate more data, your virtual machines will become unusable – so don’t forget to lớn keep an eye on the amount of không tính phí space. We also went through methods of shrinking thin-provisioned VMware virtual disks, in case you prefer not lớn add more storage và need lớn reduce the space taken.