Does VMWare offer its own defrag utility or does it rely on the built in defrag tool that comes with Windows?

[Simob]

Does VMWare offer its own defrag utility or does it rely on the built in defrag tool that comes with Windows?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Which VMware product are you using? With Workstation you have a defragment option, but not with ESX:

Defragmenting a Virtual Disk

Click Utilities > Defragment to defragment the virtual disk. Defragmenting rearranges data on the virtual disk so that the individual blocks that make up the specific files on the virtual disk are contiguous.

Using the defragment feature improves the performance of your virtual disk, but it does not reduce the amount of storage space the virtual disk consumes on your host operating system. Defragmenting the disk can be a time-consuming process.

The defragmentation process requires free working space on the host computer’s disk. If your virtual disk is contained in a single file, for example, you need free space equal to the size of the disk’s file. For details about all the considerations you need to take into account when defragmenting a virtual disk, see the chapter about using disks in the Workstation User’s Manual.

[Simob]

I thank you for the reply. I have read that part on the manual, but it does not tell if they are invoking the Windows Defrag tool or if they are using their own utility and if it is an NTFS file defragmenter?

[wbednarzyk · Accepted solution]

Workstation invokes the Windows defrag.

You have to remember that all the VMWare products are providing the hardware for the guest OS. The guest OS is technically responsible for managing it's disk. If it's a Windows VM, then it's Scandisk and Defrag. if it's linux, there are settings for scanning the integrity of the blocks on the disk.

ESX does not currently allow a shortcut to invoke defrag on a Windows disk. You could just have it scheduled in windows to run monthly during low utilization hours....

[Simob]

Thank you very much. That answer my question.