Our old system used ghost images and occasionaly we would need to reimage a partition. WIth Ghost this was easy. VMware does not play well with Ghost. Can someone give me a few ideas of how one goes about 're-imaging' a partition in a vm.
Simply clone the VMDK and when you want to reimage clone the VMDK back.
Or, even better, use templates and deploy a new VM from the template.
With the use of using templates. Or you can use the snapshot feature. Both of these features are only perform within VirtualCenter.
Michael
I basically use a tool called drive snapshot and you can get a fully functional trial here....
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/down.htm
I make a snaphot of the drive/partition and save it to the network..
Then I use a helper VM.. Create a new disk and attach it to the helper.
Restore the snapshot
disconnect the drive from the helper
attach it to the VM
And turn it on.
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If all three partitions are contained on one vmdk then deploying from a template would wipe out all three correctf? I want only one partition. I have heard of people using one vmdk for each of their partitions, in that case cloning the vmdk would be the answer. Do you think this would be the best solution?
I haven't worked with snapshots very much. Are you saying it is possible to take a snapshot (much like an image) of just a partition, and then restore that partition from the snapshot?
It is recommend to have individually partitions as it's own VMDK file. That is best practice. So with that said. It would be the best solution. But if you don't want, that product called drive snapshot (http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/) is an excellent tool to use.
Michael
That is correct.. But you would have to have the partitions created on the helper with this tool...
Basically you would have to create 1 vmdk the size of the other
Attach it to your helper VM
Create the partitions
Then restore the snapshots...
May not be what you are looking for if you want to consolidate all three partitions to one.
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If you have a licence for Ghost & feel OK with it then use it.
There are no problems (that I seen) with using Ghost (11.1) for VM imagining in ESX
I use it with VistaPE ISO (check www.boot-land.net/forums/VistaPE-f51.html)
Seb
How about using converter to resize the partitions. That is an easy way to do it.