Hello @pauljoshiva The NameNode endeavors to ensure that each block always has the intended number of replicas. The NameNode detects that a block has become under- or over-replicated when a block report from a DataNode arrives. When a block becomes over replicated, the NameNode chooses a replica to remove. The NameNode will prefer not to reduce the number of racks that host replicas, and secondly prefer to remove a replica from the DataNode with the least amount of available disk space. The goal is to balance storage utilization across DataNodes without reducing the block's availability.   Hope this answers your query.      Regards, Manoj ... View more

How much data did you delete ? Did checkpoint happen after you deleted data ? Also please check if any snapshots are present ? HDFS CLI "du" output not only include normal files but also includes the files that have been deleted and exist in snapshots (which is true in terms of real resource consumption).   Please check the output using -x flag which excludes snapshot from calculation.   hdfs dfs -du -x -s -h /path     ... View more