What is flat vmdk file

Submit ». Thai Pepper. Sorry, I've no idea why this has happened, but I'm sure someone here will. Pure Capsaicin. VMware expert. Huw This person is a verified professional.

The -flat. CrimsonKidA This person is a verified professional. Huw wrote: The. VMDK is normally used for virtualization and cloud computing. The virtual disk which contains a VMDK file can work as a single virtual machine. Henceforth, one can use the virtual machine as an independent machine which can be used for the test run of certain software on a different system.

It implies that the virtual machine can be used as different testing machines. Since virtual disks are made up of. VMDK file consists of two files: descriptor and flat file. The descriptor contains geometry, virtual hardware, ids, etc i. Flat, on the other hand, contains the actual data. On VMFS partitions, this is name of the disk descriptor file. If you select only the Allocate all disk space now check box, space is pre-allocated, so the virtual disk cannot grow.

The first VMDK file is small and points to a much larger one, whose filename says flat without a sequence number. Similarly on VMFS partitions, this is the virtual disk file that points to virtual disk data files, either thick or thin provisioned. If you select only the Split disk into 2GB files check box, virtual disk can grow when more space is needed. The number of VMDK files depends on the disk size requested.

As data grows, more VMDK files are added in sequence.