vSphere Storage - ESXi 5.1 - Documentation - VMware

vSphere Storage
You specify the newSize parameter in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes by adding a k (kilobytes), m
(megabytes), or g (gigabytes) suffix. The unit type is not case sensitive. vmkfstools interprets either k or K to
mean kilobytes. If you don’t specify a unit type, vmkfstools defaults to kilobytes.
The newSize parameter defines the entire new size, not just the increment you add to the disk.
For example, to extend a 4g virtual disk by 1g, enter: vmkfstools -X 5g disk name.
You can extend the virtual disk to the eagerzeroedthick format by using the -d eagerzeroedthick option.
NOTE Do not extend the base disk of a virtual machine that has snapshots associated with it. If you do, you
can no longer commit the snapshot or revert the base disk to its original size.
Upgrading Virtual Disks
This option converts the specified virtual disk file from ESX Server 2 format to the ESXi format.
-M --migratevirtualdisk
Creating a Virtual Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping
This option creates a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) file on a VMFS volume and maps a raw LUN to this file.
After this mapping is established, you can access the LUN as you would a normal VMFS virtual disk. The file
length of the mapping is the same as the size of the raw LUN it points to.
-r --createrdm device
When specifying the device parameter, use the following format:
/vmfs/devices/disks/disk_ID:P
Example for Creating a Virtual Compatibility Mode RDM
In this example, you create an RDM file named my_rdm.vmdk and map the disk_ID raw disk to that file.
vmkfstools -r /vmfs/devices/disks/disk_ID my_rdm.vmdk
You can configure a virtual machine to use the my_rdm.vmdk mapping file by adding the following lines to the
virtual machine configuration file:
scsi0:0.present = TRUE
scsi0:0.fileName = /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/my_rdm.vmdk
Creating a Physical Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping
This option lets you map a pass-through raw device to a file on a VMFS volume. This mapping lets a virtual
machine bypass ESXi SCSI command filtering when accessing its virtual disk.This type of mapping is useful
when the virtual machine needs to send proprietary SCSI commands, for example, when SAN-aware software
runs on the virtual machine.
-z --createrdmpassthru device
After you establish this type of mapping, you can use it to access the raw disk just as you would any other
VMFS virtual disk.
When specifying the device parameter, use the following format:
/vmfs/devices/disks/disk_ID
262 VMware, Inc.