VMware Cloud Community
hemanthgarikipa
Contributor
Contributor

How to convert a thin disk to "lazyLazy Zeroed thick disk." I have already tried inflate option but it converts to "eagerzeroed thick" which i don't want.

How to convert a thin disk to "lazyLazy Zeroed thick disk." I have already tried inflate option but it converts to "eagerzeroed thick" which i don't want.

Reply
0 Kudos
3 Replies
SavkoorSuhas
Expert
Expert

Hello Hemanth,

Kindly do the following,

1.Shut-down or power off the virtual Machine

2.Right-Click the virtual Machine and select Migrate

3.Select a datastore  to migrate the virtual machine other than the current datastore.

4.Select Type of virtual disk format from the drop-down option in select a virtual disk format

5.Click Next and Finish to complete the migration and disk format changes.

Suhas

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or Correct buttons to award points.

Don't Backup. Go Forward!
Rubrik

Reply
0 Kudos
kanishks
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Clone the VM to template while doing so it will ask you to change the disk format of your choice.(Lazy, Eager, thin) morevover Convert to template will not ask any option to change the disk format it will keep the disk intact and straight away convert it to template.

Reply
0 Kudos
continuum
Immortal
Immortal

> I have already tried inflate option but it converts to "eagerzeroed thick" which i don't want.

I doubt that you would like the results of an inflate option with a type=lazyzeroed switch.If you have a good use case for such a disk I would like to hear about.
A thin disk references every one-MB block filled with zeroes as a reference to /dev/zero.
To inflate such a disk in place without copying the full disk to a new location (like all gui-clone options and vmkfstools -i do)
ESXi finds an unused block and runs the command
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1 seek=<offset of unused block>
and then writes a new entry to the fragment-location table of the already existing vmdk.
It does that for every reference to /dev/zero it found for the thin disk.

If the dd command to zerofill the referenced physical disk is skipped you actually fill the vmdk with garbage.
That is not as bad as it may sound - but nothing you may want on purpose.
During recoveries I learned that if I extract lazyzeroed vmdks without using the VMFS-metadata they will come out with a dirty NTFS, often they have invalid MBRs and partiontables.
To mount such a NTFS-vmdk I often have to use Testdisk to fix bootsectors or use the backup MFT because the primary one is broken.

Eagerzerofilled vmdks in most cases come out as clean.

So in my humble opinion we should be glad that your wish can not be fulfilled.
On the other hand ... I would have more customers if your wish came true.

<egoistic mode on>

So lets file a feature request Smiley Wink

<egoistic mode off>


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

Reply
0 Kudos