Specifications

www.vmware.com
168
VMware GSX Server Virtual Machine Guide
If those two conditions are true, the virtual machine can safely remove the stale lock. If
either of those conditions is not true, a dialog box appears, warning you that the
virtual machine cannot be powered on. If you are sure it is safe to do so, you may
delete the lock files manually. On Windows hosts, the filenames of the lock files end in
.lck. On Linux hosts, the filenames of the lock files end in .WRITELOCK.
Physical disk partitions are also protected by locks. However, the host operating
system is not aware of this locking convention and thus does not respect it. For this
reason, VMware strongly recommends that the physical disk for a virtual machine not
be installed on the same physical disk as the host operating system.
Defragmenting and Shrinking Virtual Disks
If you have a virtual disk that grows as data is added, you can defragment and shrink it
as described in this section. If you allocated all the space for your virtual disk at the
time you created it, you cannot defragment and shrink it.
Defragmenting Virtual Disks
Defragmenting disks rearranges files, programs and unused space on the virtual disk
so that programs run faster and files open more quickly. Defragmenting does not
reclaim unused space on a virtual disk; to reclaim unused space, shrink the disk.
For best disk performance, you can take the following three actions, in the order listed:
1. Run a disk defragmentation utility inside the virtual machine.
2. Power off the virtual machine, then defragment its virtual disks from the virtual
machine settings editor (VM > Settings). Select the virtual disk you want to
defragment, then click Defragment.
Note: This capability works only with virtual disks, not with raw or plain disks
(plain disks are a feature of older VMware products).
3. Run a disk defragmentation utility on the host computer.
Defragmenting disks may take considerable time.
Note: The defragmentation process requires free working space on the host
computer’s disk. If your virtual disk is contained in a single file, for example, you need
free space equal to the size of the virtual disk file. Other virtual disk configurations
require less free space.
Shrinking Virtual Disks
Shrinking a virtual disk reclaims unused space in the virtual disk. If there is empty
space in the disk, this process reduces the amount of space the virtual disk occupies
on the host drive. You cannot shrink preallocated virtual disks or physical disks.