Installation guide

C H A P T E R 9 Storage and File Systems
299
Note: However, your original source redo log(s) and base virtual disk remain
unchanged.
• If you want to export your redo logs and base virtual disk separately, then use
the exportfile option to export the base virtual disk, and the cp command
to export each redo log separately.
Use the combination of exportfile and importfile together to copy VMFS
files to remote machines. The virtual disk should take less space than the full size of
the VMFS file, since the virtual disk does not include zeroed sectors of the VMFS file.
Imports the contents of a VMware virtual, plain, or raw disk on the service
console to the specified file on the specified SCSI device
-i --importfile <srcFile>
This command is often used to import the contents of a VMware Workstation or
VMware GSX Server virtual disk onto a SCSI device. You may also run this command to
import a virtual disk, that was created by exporting the contents of a disk from
another SCSI device.
Note: The destination device must have space for the entire size of the virtual disk,
even if it is mostly free space, as the complete contents of the source disk are copied.
Caution: The vmkfstools command may fail when attempting to import plain
disks created with version 2.5 or earlier of GSX Server. If vmkfstools returns an error
when importing a plain disk, see Path Name Failures When Importing GSX Server
Virtual Machines on page 70.
Lists the files on the file system on the specified device
-l --list
-h --human-readable
-M --verbosemappings
The output includes permissions, sizes and the last modification time for redo logs,
virtual disk files, and swap files. You can use the -h option to print the sizes in an
easier-to-read format; for example, 5KB 12.1MB, and so on.
(Advanced users only) The -M option lists the vmhba name that corresponds to each
raw disk mapping.