The downsizing of VMware's VMDK files

In doing experiments, we need to often use VMware this software, after a period of time to find that it generated more and more system files, and sometimes very much disk space. After you delete some unnecessary files and programs in this way, and then find that the system files are not smaller, how do you lose weight?

After the experiment, we found that we need to do the following operations, we can make it thin body.

First, close the snapshot.
Because it holds some snapshot data in it, the so-called snapshot is similar to the instant backup restore system,
Will make a critical backup of the entire system and restore the system when it is needed.
If you do not want the function, you can turn off the snapshot function in the "virtual machine" ==> "==>" option, and you must clear all the snapshot restore points before shutting down the feature.
After the shutdown should be to give you a lot of hard disk space.

Second, the use of shrink shrinkage function of the tool
After starting the operating system installed in the virtual machine, click on the Shrink feature in the Vmwaretools in the VMware software in the lower-right corner of its taskbar so that you can easily slim down vmdk files.

After you turn off the virtual machine, you can see a lot of space coming back on the disk. All right, let's try it.

Supplemental: About VMDK Format:

VMDK (VMware virtual Machine Disk format) is the virtual hard format created by virtual machine VMware, which exists in the VMware file system and is called VMFS (virtual Machine file system). A VMDK file represents a physical hard drive drive for VMFS on a virtual machine. All user data and configuration information about the virtual server are stored in the vmdk file.

Typically, VMDK files are relatively large, so 2TB size files are not surprising. Because of this, they are described as "large, block-level I/O patterns". Any user data changes or virtual server configuration changes, VMDK files are updated. Because VMDK does not have the incremental type Data acquisition feature, any changes to the file means that the entire file needs to be backed up again.

Use of VMDK files:
1, VMware Workstation to create a new virtual machine, to disk This step, select the use of an existing virtual disk, and then the next screen existing disk File browses to the VMDK file you have installed or downloaded and can be mounted directly.

2, Winmount support mount VMDK disk files to a virtual disk, can be very file read, modify, add, delete disk content, and save changes to the source VMDK file. Winmount supports the virtual machine hard disk mirrored VHD (dummy PC), VDI (virtual Box), VMDK (VMWare) as a virtual disk, and provides both read-only and writable open methods.

This article is from the "Hollows" blog, please be sure to keep this source http://xjsunjie.blog.51cto.com/999372/413278