Amount of free space reported on the host is incorrect in vCenter Server

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• In a VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1 or newer environment, the Datastores view and the Summary tab in vCenter Server report an incorrect amount of free space on the host
• In a direct vSphere Client connection to an ESXi/ESX host, the values may be reported correctly if you manually refresh
• Even after a manual refresh, the values may eventually be shown incorrectly

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x

Cause

The design of the vCenter Server environment in vSphere 4.1 Update 1 and later may show freespace of datastores in various resource windows which are out of sync from the actual value on the host for a period of five minutes. The hostd agent on each host schedules a thread to monitor the free space on the datastore every five minutes; if the change in value is greater than 100 MB, it re-syncs this value on vCenter Server.

Resolution

Currently, there is no resolution.

To work around this issue, use one of these methods:

Refresh the data using a PowerCLI Script

Execute a PowerCLI script which invokes the Get-Datastore -Refresh command on an hourly schedule to the host.

For example, run this command from the PowerCLI command line:

C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI> Get-Datastore -Refresh

Name FreeSpaceMB CapacityMB
---- ----------- ----------
isos 138986 554355
datastore1 2438 236544
MSCS-share 3298 3584
LH-iSCSI-0 15660 102144
LH-iSCSI-1 16612 50944
 

Change the refresh interval

To change the refresh interval, edit the configuration file and change the refreshInterval value to the desired interval.

To change the refreshInterval value:

1. Using a text editor, open the /etc/vmware/hostd/config.xml file on the host.
2. Locate the <datastore> element. This element in the default file is similar to:
   
   <datastore>

<!-- <inventory>/etc/vmware/hostd/datastores.xml</inventory> -->


<!-- <refreshInterval>0</refreshInterval> -->

<!-- <refetchVMFSDatastoreListInterval>30</refetchVMFSDatastoreListInterval> -->
</datastore>
    
3. Remove the comment indicators and replace the 0 (zero) in the <refreshInterval> element with the desired number of minutes. For example, to set the refresh interval to one hour, change this line:
   
   <!-- <refreshInterval>0</refreshInterval> -->
   
   to:
   
   <refreshInterval>60</refreshInterval>
    
4. Save and close the file.
5. Restart the hostd service for the changes to take effect.

Additional Information

For more information, see:

• Managing vSphere Storage using the Command Line Interface (CLI) (1029301)
• VMware vSphere PowerCLI Documentation