You can use the cp command to get your data out of the VMFS and it will work - as you say - provided that the destination filesystem is capable of storing these large files.
For best compatibility however, it is recommended to use the vmkfstools command to export your disks to a "thin" format of your disks so that they never cross the 2Gb boundary.
Then for importing the disks back into your vmfs storage, you can again use cp, however this has downsides as:
- there will be a larger number of SCSI locks which can cause problems with your other VMs
- the destination VM disk can be fragmented as cp doesn't allocate the complete file before starting the copy
So in conclusion, the standard unix copy commands work with the VMFS filesystem, but they are not the optimal way of using your resources. In that case use the vmkfstools command.
Here's a simple example:
backup:
vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/storage1/test/test.vmdk -d 2gbsparse /home/wila/backup/test.vmdk
restore:
vmkfstools -i /home/wila/backup/test.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/storage1/test/test.vmdk
Message was edited by: wila
Added example
