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11Al
Contributor
Contributor

Pre allocated VMDK

Question: in a pre-allocated VM disk in single file, need to do some maintenance as defrag and shrink or not?

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abhilashhb
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

There is a very good article here by Cormac

Should I defrag my Guest OS? | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs

If you decide to do it,

VMware KB: Defragmenting and shrinking VMware Workstation virtual machine disks

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

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11Al
Contributor
Contributor

But I have seen that not preallocated VMDK always tends to fragment, while a preallocated not. When I defrag VMK not preallocated, the procedure always takes many time. While defragmenting a preallocated VMDK the procedure is always instantaneous.

Since I'm trying to figure out how works a VMDK preallocated in single file, I wonder also, how snapshots work in preallocated VMDK? As normal not preallocated VMDK?

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