Hi Bob; thanks for the reply!
"vmware support made a copy of a 13TB vmdk to a different folder in my vsan as a backup."
Using what method precisely? Was this copied from vSAN or somewhere else?
It was copied from vsan to vsan from within the web client. We browsed the vSAN datastore to the folder containing the vmdk, right-clicked the .vmdk file in question, and did a "copy to" a different folder on the same vsan (the only vsan datastore we have).
"I can download every other file from that folder (there are no other vmdk's)."
Are you able to download other vmdks from other VMs and do these result in usable disks? (determining whether downloading Objects to flats is working and/or potentially 2TB+ limiting)
Good thought; nope...I cannot download any vmdks...same error as above. Obviously, this is the crux of the matter, and I'm having trouble finding solutions.
"the size shows as 549k. ??"
Yes, because vSAN Disk Objects are not stored as -flat.vmdks but distributed Objects on vsandatastore and thus all you are measuring the size of here is the text files that point to these Objects.
&
"If I use winscp, that same file shows as 1k."
Same as above - you are just copying a descriptor, not data.
Interesting; then the only way to copy an entire vmdk is thru the gui?
"If I attach it to a VM, it shows as 6.07TB (ftt=1)"
Is it Thin-provisioned? Are you looking at the space used on vsandatastore or the provisioned size of the vmdk?
I messed up that sentence. :-) From within Windows Server 2012, the drive shows as 6.07TB. When I edit the settings of the 2012 vm that it's attached too, I've got it set to FTT=1, the size of the hdd is reported as 6,215.0625GB, and the Virtual SAN storage consumption is 12.14TB.
Anyway, aside from the above (that don't fix the issue, just clarify why you are seeing this), what are you trying to achieve here?
Do you want the vmdk gone to free up the space? Do you want it transferred to alternative storage? Do you have a datastore attached to at least one of the hosts with enough space to store this disk? If no attached storage, do you have some alternative method of gettign this onto your desktop e.g. Network-based back-up?
The goal is to move this vmdk off of vSAN to free up space. I only have that much available space on the NAS box I use for backups. The reason for having a working copy of the vmdk is that we're about to try a procedure on the original vmdk and it's two snapshots, and if that for some reason fails catastrophically, we know that at least this vmdk is good...meaning, we'll "only" lose data from March to the current time; we won't lose the entire set of data. Many failure points have lead to this situation, all of which are being fixed. But "the perfect storm" happened, and this is the only "current" copy of this data that we have, so I'm being overly cautious. (All our backups also got smacked, so none of them go past January. Again, worst case all the way around!)