Specifications

CHAPTER 6 Using Disks in a Virtual Machine
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6. Specify the virtual device node in the Virtual IDE Node or Virtual SCSI Node list,
as appropriate.
7. Decide if you want to make this virtual disk an independent disk. Under Disk
Mode, check Independent, then check Persistent or Nonpersistent.
Independent disks are not included in snapshots.
Note: The independent disk option should be used only by advanced users
who need it for special-purpose configurations.
You have two options for an independent disk. You can make the disk Persistent,
which means that changes are immediately and permanently written to the disk.
Or you can make the disk Nonpersistent, which means that changes to the disk
are discarded when you power off or reset the virtual machine.
8. Decide if you want to preallocate the virtual disk space. Allocating all the space
at the time you create the virtual disk gives somewhat better performance and
ensures you do not run out of disk space on the host, but it requires as much disk
space as the size you specify for the virtual disk. You cannot shrink a preallocated
disk. To preallocate the virtual disk, select Allocate all disk space now.
A preallocated virtual disk is needed for clustering virtual machines. For more
information about clustering, see High-Availability Configurations with VMware
GSX Server in the VMware GSX Server Administration Guide.
If you do not preallocate the disk, the virtual disk’s files start small and grow as
needed, but they can never grow larger than the size you set here.
You may also specify whether you want the virtual disk created as one large file
or split into a set of 2GB files. You should split the virtual disk if it is stored on a
FAT32 file system or a file system that cannot support files larger than 2GB, such
as FAT16. To do this, check Split into 2GB files.
9. Click OK to add the virtual disk.