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Asked: 2011-08-20 11:59:39 +0800 CST

How to change a VM from split across multiple .vmdk files to a single one or two?

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I have a VM with 3 partitions. One main one, one for swap space, one for storage. However, there are dozens of .vmdk files. Some of those .vmdk files are very large (over 1 GB), but the majority are just over 1 MB.

I want to change this, so that there are only a few .vmdk files. Ideally, I would like one .vmdk file for the main OS + swap space, and one for storage. Is this possible? How would I do it?

virtualization vmware-player virtual-machines

1 Answers

  1. The best way to join split vmdk's is via the vmware-vdiskmanager utility. For example,

    vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r first-of-many.vmdk -t 0 Merged.vmdk

    -r specifies the target disk, -t specifies the kind of disk that will be created.

    In this case, 0 creates a grow-able disk in a single file. This command should leave the original split vmdk's in place, so that you can verify everything is functioning properly with the newly created disk.

    See http://www.vmware.com/pdf/VirtualDiskManager.pdf for documentation.

    The vmdk's themselves do not represent individual partitions. If you're looking to have a separate vmdk for the OS swap space and storage, you need to create them on separate virtual disks. In other words, swap space has a 1GB virtual hard drive to itself.

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