How to compress large folder on ESXI 5.0?

[adotan]

Hi,

I have a 100GB folder. I tried to tar gzip it (tar cvzf folder.tar.gz folder) but I get the following error:

tar: cannot store file 'Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-80GB/Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-flat.vmdk' of size 86008397824, aborting

is there another utility I can use? (I want to compress the folder and copy it to another ESXI 5.0 Server).

Thanks!!

Dotan.

[admin]

Use the winScp to  get the files and then you can zip the files.

The below blog should be helpful

How to Shrink VMDK Files | eHow

[admin · Accepted solution]

Please attach it to a vm and create an ovf. ovf will create a compressed version of VM

[adotan]

I copied the folder to my windows desktop and zipped it.

it is now about 6GB.

do you know if I can use "zip" (unzip) in ESXI?

Thanks for your help!!

Dotan.

[admin]

yep you do have options. check this post

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/279754?start=0&tstart=0

[adotan]

Hi,

I tried to unzip it and got the following error:

unzip Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-80GB.zip -d elad

Archive:  Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-80GB.zip

   creating: Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-80GB/

  inflating: Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-80GB/Record-Win7-Home-Premium-64Bit-flat.vmdk

unzip: inflate error

so "unzip" won't work as well on large files. I zipped the folder on my windows desktop with 7zip

[admin]

To be honest I have not personally tested with large files. But smaller files have worked for me with unzip.