Virtual Disk size is inaccurate

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ltadams21
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Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:04 pm

Virtual Disk size is inaccurate

Post by ltadams21 »

I have Zimbra installed in a virtual machine in XenServer 6.5.0. It is working great for one of my smaller companies that has about 20 users. However, within XenCenter I keep an eye on my .VHD files for each of my virtual machines to make sure the sizes stay healthy, but then I noticed something very strange today. I have a live Zimbra server, and a test server. I have been testing some backup and restore solutions for the databases, and today I copied over the entire /opt/zimbra directory from the test mail server to a backup drive I had mounted to it. I was very confused when the backup ended up taking much longer than I expected, and when it finished my backup of that directory, it ended up being 105 GB. This is very strange because the .VHD file associated to that machine is only 40 GB! it didn't take me long to find the culprit, and it was the main LDAP database file "zimbra\data\ldap\mdb\db" which was an even 80 GB! I barely have over 20 GB in mail in that test server, and I actually know how to completely restore a user's mail and databases without even using that main LDAP database, but my boss insisted I copy over the whole directory. My live mail server of course has the same 80 GB "data.mdb" file in the same location, and of course it doesn't reflect in the size of the virtual hard disk associated with it.

So, can anyone explain to me why that LDAP database file is 80 GB, and how come my virtual disk doesn't count the size of that file when reporting its own size? I have researched it and come up with no information.
phoenix
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Re: Virtual Disk size is inaccurate

Post by phoenix »

The first thing is that you really shouldn't be on such an old version of ZCS, there are serious security issues that need to be address by an upgrade to the most recent version.

The LDAP file is created as a sparse file, copying it expands it to the full allocated size. You should search the forums for this topic, it has been covered in detail including how to backup that file if necessary.
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Bill

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ltadams21
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Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:04 pm

Re: Virtual Disk size is inaccurate

Post by ltadams21 »

Bill,

Thanks for the information about the sparse file. I figured it was something along those lines. However, I am using version 8.6.0, which is the latest right? I think you were confusing that with my XenServer version.
phoenix
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Re: Virtual Disk size is inaccurate

Post by phoenix »

ltadams21 wrote:I think you were confusing that with my XenServer version.
You're quite right, I saw the 6.5.0 and instantly thought security problem - sorry about that outburst. The current version is ZCS 8.7 which was released today. :)
Regards

Bill

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ltadams21
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:04 pm

Re: Virtual Disk size is inaccurate

Post by ltadams21 »

Good information, thanks. I will look more into that.
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