VM Creation

[sumeet_khokhani]

Dear All,

(1) When creating local disks for VM, there is an option to store the disk files on a VMFS Store OR within VM. Which is the best option ? To be honest, i quiet don't understand this as say if we go with option 'with VM' then the VM is on VMFS anyway so why there is a specific option?

(2) For Linux guest customization via templates, does the open source tools needs to be installed seperately as Microsoft sysprep or they get installed automatically during virtual center installation? If yes, from where can we download them?

\- Sumeet.

[MR-T]

1) Usually you'd select to store the files with the VM. It keeps things cleaner.

2) You don't need to worry about installing the Linux open source sysprep as it's bundled.

[tmcd35]

Although I can't think of a situation where you would want to do this, it is possible to have say one VMFS LUN for the virtual machine files and another just for the VMDK files, or maybe you could do the same thing with two directories on the same LUN/datastore.

The option basically lets you store the VMDK's in another folder or LUN that the VM files are stored in. Both folders must be either VMFS or NFS.

Personally, I'd always keep all files, including the VMDK's, for VM in one place.

One use, if it's supported(?), is perhaps to map a RAW LUN instead of using a VMDK. Is this possible?

[Mike_Deardurff]

As tmcd said, the option to separate the files from the VM is not often used except in cases where you would have possibly SAN storage and many VMs. In these cases some users will want for instance all the C: drives of the VMs on one LUN and all the 😧 or data drives on another LUN that may be utilizing different speed disk for better performance increases. however, in best practice, most users will tell you to create larger LUNs and put your VMDKs all together than creating more smaller LUNs and separating them out. You can DEFINITELY find plenty of threads on this throughout the forum if you become interestd.

Sounds like in your case you would be best just keeping them together.

-MikeD