vSphere Storage - ESXi 5.1 - Documentation - VMware

3 Click the Hardware tab and select the appropriate hard disk in the Hardware list.
The Disk Provisioning section on the right shows the type of your virtual disk.
4 Click OK.
What to do next
If your virtual disk is in the thin format, you can inflate it to its full size.
Determine the Disk Format of a Virtual Machine in the vSphere Web Client
You can determine whether your virtual disk is in thick or thin format.
Procedure
1 Browse to the virtual machine.
a Select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, or host.
b Click the Related Objects tab and click Virtual Machines.
2 Right-click the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
3 Click the Virtual Hardware tab.
4 Click the Hard Disk triangle to expand the hard disk options.
The Type text box shows the format of your virtual disk.
What to do next
If your virtual disk is in the thin format, you can inflate it to its full size.
Inflate Thin Virtual Disks
If you created a virtual disk in the thin provision format, you can inflate it to its full size.
This procedure converts a thin disk to a virtual disk in thick provision format.
Procedure
1 Select the virtual machine in the inventory.
2 Click the Summary tab and, under Resources, double-click the datastore for the virtual machine to open
the Datastore Browser dialog box.
3 Click the virtual machine folder to find the virtual disk file you want to convert. The file has the .vmdk
extension.
4 Right-click the virtual disk file and select Inflate.
The inflated virtual disk occupies the entire datastore space originally provisioned to it.
Inflate Thin Virtual Disks in the vSphere Web Client
If you created a virtual disk in the thin format, you can convert the thin disk to a virtual disk in thick provision
format.
Procedure
1 Browse to the virtual machine.
a Select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, or host.
b Click the Related Objects tab and click Virtual Machines.
Chapter 22 Storage Thin Provisioning
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