vSphere shrink hard drive on windows OS

1. shrink HDD using windows disk management.
2. connect to host using SSH
3. turn off windows computer
4. cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore name>/<VM foldername>
5. use cat “VM name.vmdk” (not the flat one) to make a note of the RW number#
6. calculate new size 128GB= 128 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 /512 = 268435456
7. vi “VM name.vmdk” replace RW with the new number
8. vi edit shift I is to edit text; ESC to end editing; exit and save changes shift :x; shift:q! is to exit without changes
9. use vSphere to migrate or move VM to a temporary host (this will resize the HDD to the new size)
10. be patient depending on the HDD size it can take some time
11. verify size in temporary location using vSphere
12. move back to original location

 

Links:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/12938/HOW-TO-Shrink-a-VMware-Virtual-Machine-Disk-VMDK-in-15-minutes.html

vSphere enable copy and paste

copy and paste using the console in vSphere is disabled by default. (security feature)

to enable copy and paste:

1. using vSphere client right click on the virtual machine and click on edit settings.
2. navigate to : options/ advanced/ general and click on configuration parameters.
click add row and add these two parameters:
isolation.tools.copy.disable – false
isolation.tools.paste.disable – false

It is possible to set this as a default for all the vms using the ssh access and editing this file: /etc/vmware/config

more information: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsi…Id=1026437

VMware ESXi

 VMware ESXi vs. XenServer: Cloud and Desktop Feature Showdown

http://www.developer.com/services/vmware…wdown.html

Moving ESXi installation to USB key
http://serverfault.com/questions/272178/…to-usb-key