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jenish_shah
Contributor
Contributor

How can I create a Thick Disk?

Can anybody tell me what is the command to create thick disk?

How common is to make thick disk and share it among more than 1 VM?

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lholling
Expert
Expert

Hi There

What exactly are you trying to do? Yes it is possible to share a disk amongst VMs this is generally for a clustered environment which understands how to share disk space amongst multiple servers correctly.

Leonard...

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vheff
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The answer you are looking for is is this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/58188

Hope that helps.

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gehrc
Contributor
Contributor

Use this command in the console-

vmkfstools -c <size in bytes> -a buslogic (or lsilogic) -d thick (path)

To get to the console in ESXi 3.5, press Alt-F1 and type 'unsupported' and hit enter. Then type your root password. When you're done, type 'exit' and hit Enter, then Alt-F2. *NOTE: Use of the ESXi console is only recommended for use with a VMWare Tech Support Rep. You are liable for any issues that may occur when using it. I don't recommend this method if you're doing this on a production server. Try to make it on a test server and then move it perhaps.

Unfortunately, you'll need all disks in a VM to be thick if you're trying to share the disk. In this case, create all the disks, then choose Existing when you create a VM and pick it from the path. It's really only common if you are doing clustering with servers, or if you don't trust shared folders Smiley Wink

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

How common is to make thick disk and share it among more than 1 VM?

Thick disks are common, cause are the default type of ESX Smiley Wink

If you mean "eagerzeroedthick" disks, this could be useful for application cluster configuration (you can see that cluster-in-a-box require this kind of disks).

But usual MSCS configuration (across-box) use RDM disks.

For more info on application cluster see:

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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