Clean the virtual server

The below process assumes that you’ve already deleted any large files to free up disk space.

1. Login to the virtual server via SSH
2. Run the following to identify what file systems exist on the server

   # df -h
   Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   /dev/mapper/centos-root   38G   23G   15G  62% /
   devtmpfs                 908M     0  908M   0% /dev
   tmpfs                    918M     0  918M   0% /dev/shm
   tmpfs                    918M  8.8M  910M   1% /run
   tmpfs                    918M     0  918M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
   /dev/sda1                497M  307M  191M  62% /boot
   /dev/mapper/centos-home   19G  1.8G   17G  10% /home
   tmpfs                    184M     0  184M   0% /run/user/0
   tmpfs                    184M     0  184M   0% /run/user/1001
   

3. Choose which filesystem you would like to reclaim space from and then run the following to fill ALL free space with zeros. Note: This may take several minutes, so please be patient and wait for it to finish.

   # dd if=/dev/zero of=/zeroes
   dd: writing to ‘/zeroes’: No space left on device
   56287833+0 records in
   56287832+0 records out
   28819369984 bytes (29 GB) copied, 424.182 s, 67.9 MB/s
   

4. Delete the file created by dd

   # rm -rf /zeroes

5. Note: Repeat the above 2 steps for every file system you would like to reclaim space from… you will need to change the output of dd so that the file is created on the appropriate file system.
6. Shutdown the virtual server

   # shutdown -h now

Punch zeroes

1. Login to the ESXi server via SSH
2. Browse to the directory where your .vmdk files are held
3. Check the current disk usage of the .vmdk files

   # du -ah
   8.0K    ./myserver.vmx
   0       ./myserver.vmxf
   0       ./myserver.vmsd
   41.0G   ./myserver-flat.vmdk
   0       ./myserver.vmdk
   1.0M    ./myserver.nvram
   0       ./myserver-aux.xml
   1.0M    ./vmware.log
   

4. Punch zeroes

   # vmkfstools -K myserver.vmdk
   vmfsDisk: 1, rdmDisk: 0, blockSize: 1048576
   Hole Punching: 100% done.

5. Check the disk usage again and you should see that it has reduced. In this example it was reduced from 41.0G to 17.6G – a good result!

   # du -ah
   8.0K    ./myserver.vmx
   0       ./myserver.vmxf
   0       ./myserver.vmsd
   17.6G   ./myserver-flat.vmdk
   0       ./myserver.vmdk
   1.0M    ./myserver.nvram
   0       ./myserver-aux.xml
   1.0M    ./vmware.log
   8.0K    ./myserver.vmx
   

• vmware