yesterday I had a strange vmdk/LUN failure over an ESX 4 U1.
The vm is a file server with 2 hard disk: 1 for the OS of 10GB and 1 for the data of 300GB. The disk was in thock mode and the vm was the only stored on a LUN of 350GB! You say " OK The LUN has much space for that VM!".
I say: NO! the Lun fills up all the space and the vm goes down! When I received the alarm on the LUN there was only 2Mb of free space!!
The problem was on the second hard disk. It was divided on more subdisk like a snapshot, but there was no snapshot. The other mistake was the provisioned space: the disk was thick so the space provisioned was the same, but see the image below
I search over the kb in vmware and I find 2 article for the solution.
The first is abount the snapshot and the second is about the child disk.
The second article help me to the solution. I cloned the hdu with vmkfstools -i on another LUN and than I change the configuration of the vm adding the new disk instead of the old big hdu!
It was a long time waititng answer! to clone the hdu it takes about 5 hours over a SAN!
bye
aLex
