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Billy ONeal
Asked: 2010-05-23 06:43:05 +0800 CST

How can I copy a Virtual Machine on VMWare ESXi 4 while maintaining Thin Provisioning?

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We have an ESXi host we use for testing, which results in a ton of VMs being created and copied on a regular basis. We don't have the storage capacity to use thick provisioned VMs on this server, and have been maintaining the copies using VMWare Converter. But using the converter is an incredibly slow operation which copies the entire contents of the VM over the network several times before actually finishing the copy.

Is there a way to simply clone the VM but maintain the thin-provisioning?

vmware-esxi

4 Answers

  1. I get around this by making copies with the OVFtool from a command line. It isn't perfect, but it does the trick for me (note: ovftool is an app that runs on a linux system somewhere, which then connects to the ESXi host):

    #Copy a VM to an OVF (must be turned off, but you can hotclone it to a new VM first if you have vCenter):
ovftool vi://USER:PASSWORD@ESXIHOSTIP/VMNAME TARGETDIR/TARGET.ovf

#Deploy an OVF to an ESX[i] server with thin disks:
ovftool --name="Name of new VM" -dm=thin -ds=TARGET-DATASTORE SOURCEFILE.ovf vi://USER:PASSWORD@ESXIHOSTIP/

    You could also try ghettoCloneVM.pl, which is a tool to clone a VM on an ESX or ESXi server without vCenter (but the page says you have to have the "licensed" version of ESXi, not sure if that means the free version won't work). It looks like it has the ability to clone to a thin disk, so it might work for you. I haven't used this tool myself, but it is something to try.

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  2. Use vmkfstools:

    vmkfstools –i <sourcedisk> -d thin <targetdisk>

    To use vmkfstools, you can utilize unsupported mode on the physical console, or using Remote CLI (RCLI). This document outlines how to use RCLI, with a complete section on vmkfstools alone:

    vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_vcli.pdf

    You can also use PowerCLI if you're licensed for ESXi:

    $vm = get-vm "vmname"
Get-HardDisk -VM $vm | Copy-HardDisk "[Storage1]/destinationfolder" -DestinationStorageFormat thin
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  3. Are they Windows machines? I've set up a base install and sysprepped the machine. I then copy that sysprepped vmx and vmdk file into a new folder on the datastore; right-click the vmx and choose add to inventory. When I boot that machine I have a new machine... Would that work for you?

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  4. Use PowerCLI and this:

    "A powershell module to perform Storage VMotions from Thick-to-Thin. Meant to be used in place of Move-VM. Currently only accepts one VM and strings for performance reasons, will accept objects in next revision as well as more documentation."

    http://poshcode.org/1579

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