Thursday, November 20, 2014

Change .vmdk from Thick to Thin

1. Login to esx/esxi using ssh 2. CD into datastore where .vmdk is stored such as cd /vmfs/volumes/prod.esxi2.datastore/ 3. Check vmkfstools help using vmkfstools (no need to but it is good to know :) ) 4. Clone .vmdk you want to convert using '-d thin' option with different name like vmkfstools -i whatever.vmdk -d thin whatever1.vmdk 5. Then open vsphere client and login to esx/esxi then browse to datastore 6. download .vmx file and open it with text editor 7. search whatever.vmdk file and change it to whatever1.vmdk 8. remove whatever.vmdk file then that's it