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Expanding vmdk file created by V2V converter

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 1:00 am
by dtmoto
I'm testing various processes for converting our vhd files to vmdk files to be used with ESXi v4.1. (The vhd files are Virtual Iron exports.)

The V2V Image Converter converts these files successfully. However, in some cases, we also want to expand the size of the disks. Unfortunately, ESXi does not currently appear to natively support expanding IDE disks (what Virtual Iron had us use). So I've been testing the use of VMware Workstation's "vmware-vdiskmanager" utility to do this. Though expansion works with vhd images converted to vmdk by either itself or WinImage trialware, it produces an error when working with the vmdk's produced by the V2V converter:

Failed to expand the disk 'c:\temp\sw\beta.vmdk': An error occurred while writing a file; the disk is full. Data has not been saved. Free some space and try again (0xd00000008).

I have about 120GB free on the drive. I'm running the vmware-vdiskmanager on Win7 64bit from inside an elevated Administrator command prompt. For extra measure, I've also cacl'd the folder to make sure my user account isn't hampered by weird Windows file perms.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Re: Expanding vmdk file created by V2V converter

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 1:19 am
by dtmoto
Mystery solved. Very strange....

Just after posting my last comment, I had a stray thought. Perhaps the problem had something to do with the names of my files....

My original VHD file was called this:
beta.sas.vhd

V2V Image converted created these two files while converting:
beta-flat.vmdk (the big binary data file)
beta.sas.vmdk (the small text descriptor file)

I thought it odd that the descriptor name included the ".sas" while the data file name dropped it, so I renamed beta.sas.vmdk to beta.vmdk. That allowed vmware-vdiskmanager to work. I guess it makes certain assumptions about names even though the descriptor file clearly states the correct "flat" file name under the "Extent description" section. This seems like a VMware problem, but it might pay off for the V2V converter to be aware of it.

Anyway, thanks. And thanks to StarWind for making this free utility available! Hope this helps someone.

Re: Expanding vmdk file created by V2V converter

Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 9:17 pm
by anton (staff)
Sounds like name parsing is broken inside V2V converter thing as it treats file name after first dot as an extension. It's really a minor issue (as nobody ever hit this excet you) but we'd definitely ask software developer to look at this one closer to V5.6 release. Thank you very much for your feedback!
dtmoto wrote:Mystery solved. Very strange....

Just after posting my last comment, I had a stray thought. Perhaps the problem had something to do with the names of my files....

My original VHD file was called this:
beta.sas.vhd

V2V Image converted created these two files while converting:
beta-flat.vmdk (the big binary data file)
beta.sas.vmdk (the small text descriptor file)

I thought it odd that the descriptor name included the ".sas" while the data file name dropped it, so I renamed beta.sas.vmdk to beta.vmdk. That allowed vmware-vdiskmanager to work. I guess it makes certain assumptions about names even though the descriptor file clearly states the correct "flat" file name under the "Extent description" section. This seems like a VMware problem, but it might pay off for the V2V converter to be aware of it.

Anyway, thanks. And thanks to StarWind for making this free utility available! Hope this helps someone.