Defragment VM (vmdk) on ESX 4.1

[lvaibhavt]

Hi All,

I have few Windows 2008 Servers running as VM on ESX 4.1.

SCOM/Microsoft reports that we need to we need to defragment the VM's.

Can you please let me know the way on how can I defragment the VM's or vmdk's.

Thanks

Vaibhav

[a_p_]

SCOM/Microsoft reports that we need to we need to defragment the VM's.

This seems to be related to the guest OS itself. In this case, the steps to defragment the Windows guest OS are the same as if installed on a physical system. VMware does not offer defragmentation of files (e.g. .vmdk files).

André

[lvaibhavt]

Thanks Andre,

So this means that there is no way that we can defrag a VM from VMware way

We only have Disk Defrag tool from OS to defrag VM's?

Is there a way via which we can defrag the VM's

[Troy_Clavell]

just be careful if you are utilizing thin provisioning

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2011/09/should-i-defrag-my-guest-os.html

[jdptechnc]

If it is SCOM reporting this, it is just telling you that the NT file system inside the VM is fragmented, not the VM file itself.  You would handle this the same way you would handle it on any other Windows Server (defrag from Windows, or kick off the task from the SCOM console against the VM's that reported the alert).  Just heed the warning that someone posted about being careful doing this if you are thin provisioned.  VMware (and/or your shared storage, depending on where you have thin provisioning enabled) will have to provision additional space to have room to defragment the fragmented files.

[Josh26]

Defragmenting a VM is usually a bad idea in general.

It messes with thin provisioning.

It doesn't actually make any sense in a SAN environment at all, which you are usually in for VMware to be involved.

You stand to gain 0.

SCOM isn't intelligent unfortunately. My advise would be to find a way to disable the warning.

[lvaibhavt]

Thank you for the response

The VM's I am talking about are thick provisioned and they are on SAN.

So this means should I go for OS disk defrag and should forget about it.

thanks

[jdptechnc]

I don't think anyone is saying you "should" do anything without knowing your backend storage (the SAN could be thick provisioned or dedupe, for example, and defrag be negatively impactful) and other environmental factors.  But if you do decide to defrag, yes, you do it from Windows.

You might consider talking to your storage administrator first.