Efficient Mail Queue Management Clearing All Messages in Exim with Ease (Updated August 2024)

Changing  thick to thin or thin to thick provisioning of a virtual disk

This article provides steps to change the provisioning of a virtual disk from thick to thin, or from thin to thick. The procedure uses the vSphere Client and vCenter Server to perform this task.

Resolution

Note: Before following these procedures, VMware highly recommends that you have a valid backup of the virtual machine and enough space to convert the virtual machine's disk(s) from thin to thick.

To change the provisioning of a virtual machine base disk from thin to thick from the Datastore Browser:

1. Power off the virtual machine.
2. In the vSphere Client, select the virtual machine in the inventory.
3. Click Edit Settings to display the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box.
4. 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, either Thin or Thick.
5. Click the Summary tab.
6. Under Resources, double-click the datastore where the virtual machine resides to open the Datastore Browser dialog box.
7. Click the virtual machine folder to find the virtual disk file you want to convert. The file has the .vmdk extension.
8. Right-click the VMDK file, and click Inflate. The Inflate option converts the disk to thick provisioned.

Notes:

• If the Inflate option is grayed out, this may indicate that the virtual machine is not powered off or that it is not thin provisioned.
• There should be no snapshots and the conversion is performed on the base disk.

To convert a virtual machine base disk from thick to thin provisioning by changing the datastore and using offline virtual machine migration:

1. Power off the virtual machine.
2. Right-click the virtual machine, and click Migrate.
3. Click Change datastore.
4. Click Next, and select a datastore that is not the same as the current datastore.
5. From the dropdown, select the Thin Provision virtual disk format.
6. Click Next, then Finish.

this article from vmware KB