fatVM – A How To Guide
Introduction
fatVM automates a set of best practices that have been applied manually for extending Windows VMware virtual disks created with the pre-allocated storage policy, whose C drives are becoming full. These best practices are collated from several different blog posts in the public domain that are surveyed in
How To Guide
A) Start fatVM
B) Select a VM to extend
fatVM locates the VM’s you have used in the recent past and lets you select the one whose drive you wish to extend. In the figure below, the Virtual Machine Library shows the names of two VM’s, Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 respectively, which have been run using VMware Fusion in the recent past.
Or, Select a new VM: In case you want to extend a VM that does not belong to your Virtual Machine Library, you can simply skip this selection step. You can drag and drop the .vmx configuration file for that VM on to the fatVM screen as shown below
Once you have selected the VM, fatVM discovers the current size of the VM’s disk (20GB as shown below). It analyzes the VM and provides you with a view of its partitions. This view may be meaningful for users who are familiar with the manner in which Windows formats and organizes the disk.
C) Choose the extension size: Extending a VM is very simple. You select the size you wish to extend it to using the Disk Resizer slider.
D) Extend the VM: Press the Extend Now button. This causes fatVM to initiate the execution of a 10 step process for extending the VM.
Step 1: A VM can only be extended when it is offline. This step verifies that the VM is indeed offline and terminates the extension process if the VM is found to be running.
Step 2: Next, fatVM analyzes the VM to determine its current size and whether it has snapshots or clones.
Step 3:In this step, fatVM discovers the number of partitions in the VM has and identifies the partition that contains the Windows system.
Step 4:A virtual disk is either implemented as split over a linked list of 2GB flat files or as a single, monolithic flat file. In this step, fatVM verifies the disk type to decide on the appropriate method for processing it
Step 5:fatVM creates a snapshot before extending the VM’s virtual disk to preserve its existing state. It also creates a new, larger, disk to hold all the original data.
Step 6:Attach the ISO in preparation of partitioning the disk
Step 7: Create Windows partition
Step 8: Format Windows file system
Step 9: Boot Windows to validate the extended disk using the chkdsk utility.
fatVM starts a VM using the newly extended disk.
It executes the chkdsk command for verifying the extended disk
Wndows starts up and the VM is ready to use.
Step 10: fatVM completes its extension and the extended VM is ready for use
E) Conclusion: You have achieved the extension of the VM simply by pressing the Extend Now button provided by fatVM. Note that fatVM preserves your original VM as a safety measure. Once the VM has been extended, you should boot only the extended VM. not the original VM.
The Registry, File System and App Browser (Optional, for advanced users only) You can review and validate critical Registry key values in the VM using the Windows Registry browser even though it is offline.
You can browse the folder hierarchy within the Windows file system, e.g., to check whether critical patches have been applied, even though the VM is offline.
You can review the apps that are installed on the VM even though it is offline.
Need Help? Visit our Help Line at http://www.gudgud.com/support. Let us know how you find fatVM, we would love to hear from you.
