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UlyssesOfEpirus
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As fast as raw disks, but can grow and is simpler than LVM?

To avoid fragmentation and increase performance flat virtual drives are recommended.  These cannot grow so you have to start them off as big and waste space in the host drive.

Or use LVM in the guest and add a 2 GB flat drive at a time, say. Which is merged into a pool of storage space where the linux guest stores its logical volumes, or something like that.

But LVM seems complicated, is there a simpler (and hopefully automatic) way to grow virtual drives without losing any performance?

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WoodyZ
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UlyssesOfEpirus wrote: To avoid fragmentation and increase performance flat virtual drives are recommended.  These cannot grow so you have to start them off as big and waste space in the host drive.

I have no problem expanding a flat disk so I'm not sure where you're getting this info from! Smiley Wink

But LVM seems complicated, is there a simpler (and hopefully automatic) way to grow virtual drives without losing any performance?

Obviously it easier to deal with if not using LVM, then it's straight forward.  Although I would never expand a disk without first having a proper backup of it! Smiley Wink

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grace27
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Hi

Welcome to the communities.

I think it is by nature of design you can not do other way

or use thick or thin provisioning .

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UlyssesOfEpirus
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Doesn't anyone use another filing system in the guest to join hard drives into one so that flat hard drives can be added to the pool manually in increments of 2 GB when growth is required?  LVM is a nightmare, there have to be simpler solutions.

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WoodyZ
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grace27 wrote: or use thick or thin provisioning .

You're replying to a post in the VMware Workstation forum and "thick or thin provisioning" is not applicable!

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WoodyZ
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UlyssesOfEpirus wrote: To avoid fragmentation and increase performance flat virtual drives are recommended.  These cannot grow so you have to start them off as big and waste space in the host drive.

I have no problem expanding a flat disk so I'm not sure where you're getting this info from! Smiley Wink

But LVM seems complicated, is there a simpler (and hopefully automatic) way to grow virtual drives without losing any performance?

Obviously it easier to deal with if not using LVM, then it's straight forward.  Although I would never expand a disk without first having a proper backup of it! Smiley Wink

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UlyssesOfEpirus
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Oopsa, thanks for replying, didn't notice this new feature. Is it also possible to convert regular virtual disks to flat?

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WoodyZ
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During the creating of the Virtual Machine one can select between using a split or monolithic virtual hard disk however afterwards in VMware Workstation one would have to use the VMware Virtual Disk Manager (vmware-vdiskmanager) from the CLI (Command Prompt / Terminal) which can be found in the Working Directory of VMware Workstation.  Then swap out the virtual hard disks.

Executing vmware-vdiskmanager without any arguments will output the internal help file with syntax and examples.