Hello,

i have some VMs in ESXi 4.0 U1, i installed the virtual Disks as "thin" so they should grow in size, when the VM is becoming bigger.

If i look at the vmdk-files in the DatastoreBrowser of vSphere Client 4 this is the case and i have some 20 GB files for my Windows Server 2008 vmdk-files.

But if i look into the real file system by busybox (i use WinSCP or putty, and same with Trilead VMX) then each vmdk-flat has the maximal size of 100 GB (exactly 107 GB). The vmdk-file is named there .vmdk-flat and not .vmdk like in the DatastoreBrowser.

If i download the vmdk-file by DatastoreBrowser to a Windows machine i get as well a vmdk-flat with big size and not the size indicated in DatastoreBrowser.

Surprisingly all vmdk-flat-files together (seen in WinSCP or VMX) are bigger than the physical HDD (500 GB).

What is this?

Thank you, franc