This article provides steps for conversion of a virtual disk to eagerzeroedthick
to support clustering features while making a copy of the virtual disk. The new copy can be attached to a new or existing virtual machine.
Virtual disks can also be converted in place.
For more information, see:
An existing VMDK virtual disk can be converted to a Thick disk with any unallocated blocks being allocated and zeroed out. This preserves any existing data in the virtual disk. This corresponds to the Enable Clustering Support option when creating a virtual disk using the vSphere Client.
It is necessary to repeat these steps after extending an existing eagerzeroedthick
virtual disk with the vmkfstools -X
command or by increasing the disk size using the vSphere Client.
Caution: Do not convert a virtual disk if the virtual machine has snapshots. If you want to convert a virtual disk with snapshots, ensure to delete the snapshots first. For more information, see Determining if a virtual machine is using snapshots (1004343).
To clone and convert a virtual disk to Eager Zeroed Thick from the vSphere Command Line Interface (vCLI) or VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA):
vifs
command. For example:vifs --server ESXHostnameOrIP --username root --listds
[DatastoreName]
[DatastoreName2]
[DatastoreName3]
vifs --server ESXHostnameOrIP --username root --dir '[DatastoreName]'
VirtualMachineName
VirtualMachineName2
vifs --server ESXHostnameOrIP --username root --dir '[DatastoreName] VirtualMachineName/'
VirtualMachineName.vmx
VirtualMachineName.vmdk
VirtualMachineName-flat.vmdk
vmkfstools
command:vmkfstools <connectoptions>
-i <source.vmdk></source.vmdk> <destination.vmdk>
-d eagerzeroedthick
vmkfstools --server ESXHostnameOrIP --username root -i "[
DatastoreName]
MyVM
/
MyVM
.vmdk" "[DestinationDatastore] NewVM/NewVM.vmdk" -d eagerzeroedthick
To clone and convert a virtual disk to Eager Zeroed Thick from the ESX host console:
/vmfs/volumes/<DatastoreName>/<VMName>/
directory.
Power down the virtual machine using the source VMDK virtual disk file. vmkfstools
command:vmkfstools -i <source.vmdk></source.vmdk> -d eagerzeroedthick <destination.vmdk>
vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/MyVM/MyVM.vmdk -d eagerzeroedthick /vmfs/volumes/DestinationDatastore/NewVM/NewVM.vmdk