Hi Alan-

You may want to check out vmware virtual disk development kit (VDDK). it includes a tool called diskmount that can be used to mount virtual disks. you can mount virtual disks (VMDK) and edit them if they VMs are offline (not powered on). Here is the link for download
http://www.vmware.com/download/sdk/virtualdisk.html

VDDK is a free download.

Hari

Yes, You can use Mountvm utility included in VCB to mount a VMDK file on the Windows system but for this, first you need to take the backup of your vmdk file using VCB as the Mountvm utility can only mount the vmdk file that has been backed up using VCB.

I have implemented the same thing in my environment in which the backup of the VMs gets stored in the NFS partition attached to the ESX server using the vcbMounter utility and then the same NFS volume is attached to the widows server through which i can mount the vmdk file on the widows server.

Do let me know if you need more information about this.

Regards,

Sumit

Vmware Certified Professional

Hi there....

This is moving a vmdk off the esx server for distribution out to the field. If (when) tweaks to the image are needed we need to run some cleanup steps (removing session history and the like).

Thanks all for the pointers, however I can't get vmware-mount (windows or linux version) to mount an image The closest I get is on linux where I get:

# vmware-mount filename.vmdk 5 /mnt/test/
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
Failed to mount partition 5 of disk 'filename.vmdk' on '/mnt/test/'

It will mount the first partition just fine though. According to -p I see:

# vmware-mount -p filename.vmdk
Nr Start Size Type Id Sytem
--

---

• ---- --

  ---

1 63 208782 BIOS 83 Linux
2 208845 10490445 BIOS 83 Linux
3 10699290 4192965 BIOS 82 Linux swap
4 14892255 16563015 BIOS 5 Extended
5 14892318 16562952 BIOS 83 Linux

Any thoughts?