Virtual disk options allow you to set up, migrate, and manage virtual disks stored in VMFS and NFS file systems. You can also perform most of these tasks through the vSphere Web Client .
Supported Disk Formats When you create or clone a virtual disk, you can use the -d --diskformat
suboption to specify the format for the disk.
Creating a Virtual Disk Use the vmkfstools
command to create a virtual disk.
Example for Creating a Virtual Disk This example illustrates creating a two-gigabyte virtual disk file named rh6.2.vmdk on the VMFS file system named myVMFS
. This file represents an empty virtual disk that virtual machines can access.
Initializing a Virtual Disk Use the vmkfstools
command to initialize a virtual disk.
Inflating a Thin Virtual Disk Use the vmkfstools
command to inflate a thin virtual disk.
Removing Zeroed Blocks Use the vmkfstools
command to convert any thin, zeroedthick, or eagerzeroedthick virtual disk to a thin disk with zeroed blocks removed.
Converting a Zeroedthick Virtual Disk to an Eagerzeroedthick Disk Use the vmkfstools
command to convert any zeroedthick virtual disk to an eagerzeroedthick disk.
Deleting a Virtual Disk This option deletes a virtual disk file at the specified path on the VMFS volume.
Renaming a Virtual Disk This option renames a virtual disk file at the specified path on the VMFS volume.
Cloning or Converting a Virtual Disk or RDM Use the vmkfstools command to create a copy of a virtual disk or raw disk you specify.
Migrate Virtual Machines Between Different VMware Products Typically, you use VMware Converter to migrate virtual machines from other VMware products into your ESXi system. However, you can use the vmkfstools -i
command to import virtual disks in 2gbsparse format into ESXi and then attach this disk to a new virtual machine you create in ESXi .
Extending a Virtual Disk This option extends the size of a disk allocated to a virtual machine after the virtual machine has been created.
Upgrading Virtual Disks This option converts the specified virtual disk file from ESX Server 2 format to the ESXi format.
Creating a Virtual Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping This option creates a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) file on a VMFS volume and maps a raw LUN to this file. After this mapping is established, you can access the LUN as you would a normal VMFS virtual disk. The file length of the mapping is the same as the size of the raw LUN it points to.
Example for Creating a Virtual Compatibility Mode RDM In this example, you create an RDM file named my_rdm.vmdk and map the disk_ID raw disk to that file.
Creating a Physical Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping This option lets you map a pass-through raw device to a file on a VMFS volume. This mapping lets a virtual machine bypass ESXi SCSI command filtering when accessing its virtual disk.This type of mapping is useful when the virtual machine needs to send proprietary SCSI commands, for example, when SAN-aware software runs on the virtual machine.
Listing Attributes of an RDM This option lets you list the attributes of a raw disk mapping.
Displaying Virtual Disk Geometry This option gets information about the geometry of a virtual disk.
Checking and Repairing Virtual Disks Use this option to check or repair a virtual disk in case of an unclean shutdown.
Checking Disk Chain for Consistency With this option, you can check the entire disk chain. You can determine if any of the links in the chain are corrupted or any invalid parent-child relationships exist.