Aligning Windows XP VMs

[rodrigontap]

Hi All,

I have to align 425 vmdks from 425 desktops. Nowdays, it is 3x ESXi 4.1 HA Clusters.

I wanna create a very simple program using vSphere APIs to make this task.

Looking for the API, I believe that I need to use VDDK to accomplish this mission. My questions:

0. I know that I need to create a new vmdk, with the same size from the original. After create it, how I make this alignment?

1. With the alignment done, I need to copy all the contents of the original partition(misaligned) to the new vmdk into the new partition aligned. How to do this?

Please, help me, you don need to send me the code, only give a direction .... I appreciate any help!

Thanks,

Nascimento

[Hosted201110141]

I would check out NetApp's MBRSCAN/MBRALIGN tools if you have access to their NOW site.

Hosted

[rodrigontap]

Hello,

I have access to NOW site, but the MBRAlign Tools only works with ESX. It doesn't work with ESXi.

I'd like to have any kind of direction in which API should I use to develop it to ESXi.

Thanks,

Nasc

NetApp - Enjoy it!

[Hosted201110141]

Maybe you will have better luck than I did with that, but I eventually just stood up a single ESX box for the explicite purpose of aligning everything that needed to be aligned and then tore it down.  If you are using fiber channel storage and you have an extra server this might be the easiest way to go.  If you are using iSCSI storage you could just use a linux virtual machine.

[rodrigontap]

I've done this on the customer. But my customer didn't like.... He said : "It's a lot of work ... "

Thanks for your help.

Nasc

NetApp - Enjoy it!

[logiboy123]

VMware Standalone Converter 5 will align your disks for you when you import a server.

So you could potentially just do a V2V and this will align your disks for you as well as installing the latest version of VMware Tools etc.

GParted will also align your disks for you, but this is a manual process.

Cheers,

Paul