Turn off thin provisioning

[MasterRacker]

I'm using ESXi and have a number of VMs that were created using thin provisioning on the local storage of the host. I would like to move some of them to a SAN that does it's own version of allocate on demand. To minimize fragmentation the SAN vendor recommends I only use what they call sparse provisioning on the SAN and use thick provisioning on the VMware.

Is there a way to turn off thin provision on an existing VM or will I need to recreate them on the SAN?

Jeff
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"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[Arisap]

If you have Enterprise or Enterprise Plus licensing, you can do storage vmotion. If not:

1. Create a helper VM
2. Add a thick provisioned disk of the size you want
3. Mount the new disk and the VM's original disk to the helper (original VM must be powered down first)
4. Copy data from original thin disk to thick disk
5. Power down helper and remove disks
6. Remove thin disk from original VM and add the new thick disk
7. Boot the original VM with its think disk and if it works, delete the thin disk entirely.


Rinse and repeat for all VM's

 

[Provogeek]

Sorry Arisap but that process seems like removing the lug nuts on a car using a hand wrench. You might be able to do it, but gosh it's gunna be a pain in the rump.

The use of Storage Vmotion is for changing the datastore on a live, running, and in use virtual machine. However, any license model you have will allow you to change the datastore of a virtual machine that is powered down.

To change these virtual machines to thick, simply shut them down and then migrate the powered off machine. Choose to just change the datastore (or host as well if you want), select to make the disk thick on the destination, choose the datastore and off you go. You can't do this with a virtual vcenter server though (should always make that thick disk anyway). There is a process to move the vm to a different datastore, but you need Storage Vmotion to change the disk provision of a virtual vcenter server

Remember, to do this, you MUST change to a different datastore. Can't change the disk provisioning on the same datastore the vm is already on.

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Brent Schmidt Senior Network Engineer
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[bshubinsky]

You could also use the free VMware Converter software do a V2V - when choosing your V2V options, just select to provision the disk as Thick.