Now select the target directory and check the “Mount read-only” checkbox. Next, create a directory in the Linux file system to mount a virtual disk in VMDK format: Next, click “Browse” and select the VMDK file. In VMware Workstation, click the “File” tab and select the Mount Virtual Disks option. The parent virtual disk can be opened in read-only mode so as not to cause unnecessary problems.Īs an example, consider mounting a VMDK virtual disk of a VMware Workstation virtual machine with snapshots on a Linux host. Then it is necessary to mount the corresponding delta virtual disk in the host operating system. Therefore, if you want to open the state of the virtual disk at the time after creation, you must have a parent virtual disk and delta disks. If snapshots of the virtual machine are available, delta virtual disks are created after each snapshot is taken. With VMware Workstation, you can mount VMDK files on the host operating system. Mounting VMDK files in a host OS with VMware Workstation. Mounting the VMDK file in these ways does not take much time and effort. These methods are simpler and more versatile, since a hypervisor is not required.
To do this, you can open the mounted drive in Windows Explorer and then copy the contents of the VMDK file connected to the healthy virtual machine.
You now have full access to the virtual disk files. Select a recently made copy of the VMDK file. Then select “Add New Device” and click on “Existing Hard Drive”. In the vSphere Client, go to “Hosts and Clusters”, and right-click the healthy virtual machine and click “Edit Settings”. Then connect the VMDK virtual disk to another healthy virtual machine, such as Windows Server 2016, on the same ESXi host. Then choose a location to copy for example to the root directory of the same datastore. Next, click on the VMDK file and select “Copy to”. n the VMware vSphere client, open the Storage section and select the datastore with the VMDK file. This file contains an embedded virtual disk descriptor that defines the structure, geometry of the virtual disk, virtual hardware version, and identifiers.Īs an example, consider opening a VMDK virtual disk of one VM with another VM on an ESXi host. If we are talking about VMs on ESXi servers, then the VMDK virtual disk format is the virtual disk descriptor (diskname.vmdk) and the virtual disk extent (diskname-flat.vmdk, where raw files are stored).įor VMware Workstation virtual machines, the virtual disk format is an extended data file (diskname.vmdk, monolithic sparse). vmdk and it is applicable to VirtualBox and VMware virtual machines. VMDK, as mentioned above, is an open source virtual disk file format developed by VMware. In such a case, you need to know the most efficient VMDK file opening methods. There are situations when you need an open. The VMDK file is often a fixed size or it can grow as data accumulates using VMware Virtual Disk Manager. There are special third-party converters for this. Along with the VMDK file, there is now a VHD file with the same functions, however, these files do not support each other. The VMDK file can be described as a virtual disk (disk file format) that contains all the stored information of the hard disk of a VMware virtual machine.