Installation guide

C H A P T E R 9 Storage and File Systems
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Note: If you have an active swap partition, you must deactivate it before running this
command. Deactivate swap through the VMware Management Interface and reboot
your server. Once this vmkfstools -T command completes, you can reactivate
your swap file.
This conversion may take several minutes. When your prompt returns, the conversion
is complete.
Note: In ESX Server 2.1, private VMFS volumes are deprecated. If you have an existing
VMFS version 1 (VMFS-1) private volume, then the newly created VMFS-2 volume’s
access mode is automatically changed to public.
Before starting this conversion, check the following:
• Back up the VMFS-1 volume that is being converted
• Be sure there are no virtual machines powered on using this VMFS-1 volume
• (SAN only) Be sure no other ESX Server is accessing this VMFS-1 volume
• (SAN only) Be sure this VMFS-1 volume is not mounted on any other ESX Server
Caution: The VMFS-1 to VMFS-2 conversion is a one-way process. Once the VMFS
volume is converted to VMFS-2, you cannot revert it back to a VMFS-1 volume.
Note: The first time you access a newly converted VMFS-2 volume, the initial access
will be slow, because of internal volume consistency checking.
Examples Using vmkfstools
This section includes examples using the vmkfstools command with the different
options described previously.
Create a new file system
vmkfstools -C vmfs2 -b 2m -n 32 vmhba1:3:0:1
This example illustrates creating a new VMFS version 2 (vmfs2) on the first partition
of target 3, LUN 0 of SCSI adapter 1. The file block size is 2MB and the maximum
number of files is 32.
Extends the new logical volume by spanning two partitions
vmkfstools -Z vmhba0:1:2:4 vmhba1:3:0:1
This example illustrates extending the new logical file system by adding the 4th
partition of target 1 (and LUN 2) of vmhba adapter 0. The extended file system
supports a maximum of 64 (2 X 32) files, and spans two partitions —
vmhba1:3:0:1 and vmhba0:1:2:4.