How to change an existing vmdk to thin provisioned on VMware ESXi?

If you need to convert a existing vmdk to thin provisioning on VMware ESXi you can do the following:

1. Login via SSH
2. Run the following command: vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/large-disk.vmdk -d thin /vmfs/volumes/thin-disk.vmdk

Filed under: Uncategorized by — aaron @ 9:33 pm

How to thin-provision on a VMware ESXi

Are you wondering how you can create a virtual machine which only uses the amount of space that is actually being used in the Virtual Machine?  You can do this by using thin provisioning, and following the following steps:

1. First you need SSH access enabled on the server.
2. Run the command: vmkfstools -c 10G -d thin /vmfs/volumes/test1.vmdk
3. If you receive the error:
   Failed to create virtual disk: The destination file system does not support large files (12).
   Then make sure you run the create command in the datastore you have created already.

Filed under: Uncategorized by — aaron @ 9:28 pm

How to enable ssh login on VMware ESXi

By default VMware ESXi does not have external SSH access enabled, to enable it you can do the following:

1. Login to the server via the Console.
2. Type: Alt + F1
3. Type: unsupported
4. Type: (your root password)
5. edit /etc/inetd.conf: vi  /etc/inetd.conf
6. Remove # sign in front of ssh, by moving down to the SSH line and type 1x, and then :wq
7. Run: /sbin/services.sh restart

You should now be able to login via SSH.

Filed under: Uncategorized by — aaron @ 5:41 pm