How does VMware hanble clearing temporary disk space?

[stratolynne]

How does VMware ESX handle clearing temporary disk space (on the ESX host)?

Also, what about when a VM is deleted from disk (never to be used again)?

Thanks.

[a_p_]

As most operating systems, when files are deleted, the data remains in place. If necessary you need to zero out the disk space manually.

That's one of the reasons why you may want to create zeroed thick disks for new VM's, to make sure the previous data on the disk cannot be restored from within the new guest.

André

[stratolynne]

Can you provide more info about what you mean by create zero thick disks for new VMs? How do you do that?

Thanks!

[a_p_]

Eagerzeroedthick disks means that during creation of the vmdk all blocks used by this vmdk file are zeroed out (this may take some time, depending on the vmdk size). This is neccessary for e.g. VM's which you want to use with Fault Tolerance. In the old days you needed to create such virtual disks on the CLI, as of 4.0 you can create eagerzeroedthick disks in the GUI by selecting the "Support clustering features such as Fault Tolerance" in the create disk wizard.

André

Message was edited by: a.p.

Sorry, in my above posts the "eagerzeroedthick" format is meant rather than "zeroedthick".