Specifications

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VMware GSX Server Virtual Machine Guide
13. Specify the capacity of the virtual disk.
Enter the size of the virtual disk that you wish to create.
Your virtual disk can be as small as 0.1GB (100MB). A SCSI virtual disk can be as
large as 256GB; an IDE virtual disk can be as large as 128GB. The default is 4GB.
By default, the full size of the virtual disk is allocated when you create the disk.
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.
If this setting is larger than the space available on the host machine’s hard disk, a
warning message appears, and specifies how much space you have on the host.
If the disk will exceed the available space on the host, you must make the virtual
disk smaller or clear the Allocate all disk space now check box.
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.
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.
If you later decide you want to enlarge a virtual disk, change the virtual disk from
preallocated to growable (or vice versa), or split a virtual disk that was created in
a single file (or vice versa), you can use the VMware Virtual Disk Manager to
Make the Virtual Disk
Big Enough
• The virtual disk should
be large enough to
hold the guest
operating system and
all of the software that
you intend to install,
with room for data and
growth.
• You cannot change
the virtual disk’s
maximum capacity
later.
• You can install
additional virtual disks
using the virtual
machine settings
editor.
• For example, you need
about 1GB of actual
free space on the file
system containing the
virtual disk to install
Windows Server 2003
and applications such
as Microsoft Office
inside the virtual
machine. You can set
up a single virtual disk
to hold these files. Or
you can split them up
— installing the
operating system on
the first virtual disk and
using a second virtual
disk for applications or
data files.