VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0

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Reclaiming Unused Storage Space
Last Updated December 16, 2024

When VMFS datastores reside on thin-provisioned LUNs, you can use ESXCLI commands to reclaim the unused logical blocks of a thin-provisioned LUN formatted with VMFS.
When you run the commands, you must specify the volume label
--volume-label
 or the volume ID
--volume-uuid
 but you cannot specify both.
In each iteration, the command issues unmap commands to the number of file system blocks that are specified by the optional
reclaim-unit
 argument, which defaults to 200.
The following examples illustrate how to use the command. 
# esxcli storage vmfs unmap --volume-label datastore1 --reclaim-unit 100
# esxcli storage vmfs unmap -l datastore1 -n 100
# esxcli storage vmfs unmap --volume-uuid 515615fb-1e65c01d-b40f-001d096dbf97 --reclaim-unit 500
# esxcli storage vmfs unmap -u 515615fb-1e65c01d-b40f-001d096dbf97 -n 500
# esxcli storage vmfs unmap -l datastore1
# esxcli storage vmfs unmap -u 515615fb-1e65c01d-b40f-001d096dbf97

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