vizz.info

How to split single VMware (VI/ESX) VMDKs into multiple VMDKs (Player/Server) and change growable (Player/Server/Workstation) into pre-allocated (VI/ESX)

$ vmware-vdiskmanager -r srcvmdk -t disktype dstvmdk

Disk types:

0 : single growable virtual disk
1 : growable virtual disk split in 2Gb files
2 : preallocated virtual disk
3 : preallocated virtual disk split in 2Gb file

Finally don’t forget to manually edit your .VMX file after you have converted your .VMDK

Here are some more examples

$ vmware-vdiskmanager -c -s 850Mb -a ide -t 0 myIdeDisk.vmdk
$ vmware-vdiskmanager -d myDisk.vmdk
$ vmware-vdiskmanager -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 0 destinationDisk.vmdk
$ vmware-vdiskmanager -x 36Gb myDisk.vmdk
$ vmware-vdiskmanager -n sourceName.vmdk destinationName.vmdk

For example VMware virtual disks don’t support SMARTD disks so in CentOS, Red Hat RHEL, Oracle Unbreakable and rPath use chkconfig to turn off any SMARTD service running in the VM.