Deploy an OVF with Thin Provissioning ESXI 4.0

[PcsMarty]

I have made an OVF template using Vsphere 4.0 from an ESXI 4.0 server. It is thin provissioned. When I deploy this template to another ESXI 4.0 server it always comes up thick and I can't see anywhere to change this.

[JCMorrissey]

What type of storage are you using? eg iscsi,SAN, NAS/NFS?

If using NFS it may be down to the way the filer is configured - from a similar thread relating to this

Question: What type of Disk Provisioning is supported in ESX?
Answer: Disk Provisioning:

• thick  
  • A thick disk has all space allocated at creation time. This space may contain stale data as it exists on the physical media.
• thin 
  • Space required for thin-provisioned virtual disk is allocated and zeroed on demand as opposed to upon creation.

Question: Why is Disk Provisioning different for NFS vs VMFS volume?
Answer: On the client side we have no control over how the server is going to allocate blocks for a file.

Question: What is the factor on NFS Server that causes it to be Thin or Thick provisioned?
Answer: It depends on how the filer is configured, but on almost all the filers we know of - the files will be thin provisioned.

Question:Why isn't there a common default standard?
Answer: Block allocation is not part of the NFS spec since NFS is a file level protocol. All servers will allocate blocks on demand (thin provision) but some can be configured to pre-allocate space for files based on the size of the file.

Question:Assuming that NFS Server has Thick provisioning by default will I be able to do Thin provisioning of vms?

Answer: No.