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monjo12
Contributor
Contributor

Disk growth

Hi All

After some reading I understand that VMware 4 will have some new storage features. Here is what I am wondering.

What I have is a situation where I produce virtual images for QA and developers and I assign these images a particular amount of disk space. (Say a windows 2003 session with a 40 GB disk).

Problem is that they NEVER use all the disk space they ask for! So it goes wasted, locked inside a VM session.

Are there plans to have disks grow dynamically as the user needs space so they are ONLY using what they need?

Thanks for any guidance.

If there's a doc or whitepaper I need to be reading let me know.

Thanks

Monjo

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dab
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes this feature is included and named Thin-Provisioning. Read the Docs and Webinvars on the Homepage.

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

As already suggested, this feature is called Thin Provisioning for VM(s), take a look at the release notes and documentation and here are some additional links that will be helpful on some guidance and best practices (not sure if VMware has best practice doc for thin provisioning)

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/04/thin-on-thin-where-should-you-do-thin-provisioni...

http://xtravirt.com/node/146

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

You could have two diffent level of thin disks: at ESX level, or at storage level.

At ESX level you can create them using VIC in VS4 (or only using command line in ESX 3.5).

At storage level some recent storage could implement this feature (sometimes using different names).

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/205632

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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