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Difference between Workstation and ESXi VMs?

Aside from converting vmdk's from thin to thick provisioning, what exactly does the Upload feature in WS 8 and later do, vs simply doing a copy + paste of the VM from the PC running Workstation into the ESXi datastore?

For that matter, why does Upload even convert vmdk's from thin to thick provisioning? You can create thin provisioned disks natively in ESXi so it's not like ESXi doesn't support the feature...

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a_p_
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VMware Workstation doesn't (cannot) use thin provisioning. The .vmdk format is a sparse file format which contains metadata about used data blocks in the file itself. This format isn't supported by ESXi, and that's why it needs to be converted.

André

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weinstein5
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It is more than just converting from thin to thick provisioning there is actually a format in the file itself -

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a_p_
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VMware Workstation doesn't (cannot) use thin provisioning. The .vmdk format is a sparse file format which contains metadata about used data blocks in the file itself. This format isn't supported by ESXi, and that's why it needs to be converted.

André

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