XenServer disk space maxed out but no idea why

xenserver

My XenServer 6.1 installation reports the following for the local SR:

3711.6 GB used of 3717 GB total (1491 GB allocated)

There are no snapshots visible under the "snapshots" tab of each VM and the host has been rebooted but to no avail. The problem is we cannot create any new VMs because there is no disk space and I'm worried the server will fail any minute due to the lack of disk space, but by rights that shouldn't happen since every VM has an allocated VHD doesn't it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I am using PHP Virtual Backup too and there are only 6 VMs and 9 VHDs (that I can see in XenCenter).

Best Answer

Are you using Snapshot-based backup software like PHD Virtual Backup, Alike or bash-scripts? Besides fast clones (as mentioned by Pascal), they can also fill up your storage repo. You can see all VHDs with vhd-util scan -f -m “VHD-*” -l VG_XenStorage-<UUID_of_StorageRepository> -p over XenServer CLI. If you see entries with "parent=VHD-xxxxxxxx-xxxx..." then you have VHDs with dependencies.

Solution: when you move / clone a VM to another LUN, only the last state of the VM will be copied and will therefore take less space there. After a test the original VM can be deleted, so that all dependent VHDs will be gone.

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