Convert a Virtual Disk from Thin to Thick in the vSphere Web Client

When the disk space is exhausted and a thin-provisioned disk cannot expand, the virtual machine cannot boot. If you created a virtual disk in the thin provision format, you can convert it to the thick provision format.

The thin provisioned disk starts small and at first, uses just as much storage space as it needs for its initial operations. After you convert the disk, it grows to its full capacity and occupies the entire datastore space provisioned to it during the disk’s creation.

Procedure

1. Locate the virtual machine.
   1. Select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, host, or vApp.
   2. Click the VMs tab and click Virtual Machines.
2. Double-click the virtual machine, click the Datastores tab.
   The datastore that stores the virtual machine files is listed.
3. Click the datastore link to open the datastore management panel.
4. Click the Configure tab and click Files.
5. Open the virtual machine folder and browse to the virtual disk file that you want to convert.
   The file has the .vmdk extension.
6. Right-click the virtual disk file and select Inflate.

Results

The inflated virtual disk occupies the entire datastore space originally provisioned to it.