ESX VMs Compressed With OVF Tool

[dvnguyen]

Hello all,

I  tried doing a search for this but I might've not searched with the  right terms so I couldn't find anything.  It would be great if someone  could answer my question =].

So  I currently have a VM folder that is roughly 30gb in size on the ESX server.  Using the  OVF tool with compression set at its highest, I was able to compress it  to 4gb.  However when uncompressing it, it turns out to be about 9gb.  I  was expecting the ovf-to-vmx file to be 30gb when uncompressing it.   Why is it only 9gb?  The files that I see missing when uncompressing are the *-flat.vmdx files. Aren't these needed as they are the raw disk files?  Does the ESX server VMs have extra files thats unnecessary for the OVF format?

Thank you!

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

*-flat.vmdx

is this only a typo or do you maybe have unused/renamed files in the original VM's folder? The virtual disks have a vmdk extension.

Maybe it would help if you could post a list of files with names and sizes of the original datastore and of the target after importing the OVF.

André

[dvnguyen]

Sorry you were right the files I meant to mention end with "-flat.vmdk".

Here are the list of files and sizes.

Before Compression

vm01.nvram 9kb

vm01.vmdk 1kb

vm01.vmsd 0kb

vm01.vmx 3kb

vm01.vmxf 1kb

vm01_1.vmdk 1kb

vm01_1-flat.vmdk ~ 10gb

vm01-flat.vmdk ~ 21gb

Compressed with OVF

VM01.mf 1kb

VM01.ovf 5kb

VM01-disk1.vmdk.gz ~ 3gb

VM01-disk2.vmdk.gz ~ 700 mb

Uncompressed

VM01.vmx 1kb

VM01-disk1.vmdk ~ 8GB

VM01-disk2.vmdk ~10GB

Thanks for the help!

[a_p_]

To me this looks like you had/have thick provisioned disks on your ESX hosts and imported the OVF to a desktop application (Workstation/Player) which uses non-preallocated/growing disks.

André