Moving a thin-provisioned VMDK

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PigLover

[H]ard|Gawd
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Could someone explain (or point out a tutorial) on moving a thin-provisioned VMDK from the datastore on one server to the datastore on another?

This is for ESXi-free, so vCenter is not available, no vMotion, no Storage vMotion.

If you just "download" the disk using vSphere client (or the folder containing the disk) it will expand the VMDK to full size and it is no longer thin provisioned.

Any help appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Export to OVF. Should keep the formatting for you. When you deploy you can select the format as well.
 
PigLover said:
Could someone explain (or point out a tutorial) on moving a thin-provisioned VMDK from the datastore on one server to the datastore on another?

This is for ESXi-free, so vCenter is not available, no vMotion, no Storage vMotion.

If you just "download" the disk using vSphere client (or the folder containing the disk) it will expand the VMDK to full size and it is no longer thin provisioned.

Any help appreciated.
Click to expand...

I just install a trial version.
 
you could always just SCP from the shell to the other server. That will make it thick on the other server, but you could always just re-shrink it back to thin after the move.
 
QHalo said:
Export to OVF. Should keep the formatting for you. When you deploy you can select the format as well.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Worked Perfect. Only comment is that it doesn't "keep the formatting" for you, but it does give you the option to restore the VMDK using thin provisioning. Entire move took < 10 minutes.

Appreciate the help.
 
dave99 said:
you could always just SCP from the shell to the other server. That will make it thick on the other server, but you could always just re-shrink it back to thin after the move.
Click to expand...

Never ever do this! You'll break the disk alignment and take a big IO hit.
 
Thanks for the correction. Now I need to go back and think if any of the vm's I use were transferred that way.

And if they were, what is the best way to correct? run them through vmware converter?
 
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