Thinprovisioning will be a new feature of the next release of ESX. However, it is already possible to use thinprovisioning from the service console with the vmkfstools command. Here are some tips (thanks to Richard Garsthagen):

Create a 15GB thinprovisioned disk:

vmkfstools -c 15G -d thin /vmfs/volumes/vmfs_volume/VM_name/thin_disk.vmdk

If you want to convert a thick disk, you can create a copy from it as thin disk. After that, you will need to remove the old disk from the VM and add the new converted copy. Read the rest of this entry »

Other sessions I attended today showed me a lot of new features. There was one session called:

Sneak peak into future virtual infrastructure Products / Releases

This session was packed! Every seat was taken and there were lot’s of people standing. The woman who presented was Leena Joshi (sr Product marketing manager). There were so many new features that she had to talk very fast to fit all the slides in 45 minutes (she didn’t make it). I couldn’t keep up with her writing it all down, so I took some pictures. Johan and I will explain more about these new features later this week. Read the rest of this entry »

The rumor is spreading that ESX 4.0 will be announced at VMWorld 2008 in Las Vegas. In the VMworld forum someone noticed that Lab A (Datacenter Tech Preview) is not available on Monday but starts right after the General session on Tuesday. You might conclude that ESX 4.0 will be announced during the general session on Tuesday. If you read the description of Lab A you can pretty much guess that this is about ESX 4.0:

LAB A description:

The next generation virtual datacenter from VMware will encompass exciting new technologies that further extend the flexibility, efficiency and dynamism of IT environments. A preview of these new server, networking and storage related technologies, how they work and how they can be configured to deliver higher levels of availability, resource efficiency and simplified management in IT environments will be provided.

It is pretty cool that we can get hands-on experience with the latest beta-product. Maybe we all get a USB-key with ESXi 4.0 beta?

There are also some other session that gives away that ESX 4.0 will be announced.