Install Vmware Vdiskmanager Linux
Why VMFS on CentOS 7?
I was running a VMware ESXi server since 4 years. In VMware ESXi the options for local storage are limited, especially when you like redundant storage. The option is to buy a Raid adapter. I decided to move to CentOS with ZFS storage.
Moving the VM’s to a Linux disk can be done by moving all the files to a NFS share, but an another option is to mount the VMFS filesystem. This is not natively available in Linux, but with fuse and vmfs-tools you can make it available. In this article I will describe how I did the installation and movement of the VM’s.
Install VMware Tools on a Linux Guest with the RPM Installer Install VMware Tools to the latest version to enhance the performance of the virtual machine’s guest operating system and improve virtual machine management. In this how to, I am going to share how to install VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) 5.0 Update 1 (build 614080) on CentOS 5.7 32-bit hardware platform. You need libfuse.so.2 library to install VDDK.
My baseline tools
I did a plain CentOS 7 installation, after the installation finished succesfully I connected my harddrive with the VMFS file system to the Linux box.
The VMFS driver is not natively available, so you need to compile it yourself. Glandium programmed a userspace VMFS driver for linux, more about this can be found here: http://glandium.org/blog/?p=2539
Howto compile VMFS for CentOS 7?
Enable the EPEL repository for additional packages
Install the following packages for userspace filesystems
Download the VMFS sourcecode
Unpack and compile
The programs will be installed in /usr/local/sbin
Vmware Linux Virtual Machine
To mount a VMFS file system:
*When you recognize that vmfs-fuse command is not available on you’re system make sure that fuse, fuse-devel and libuuid-devel is installed before compiling.
Files can now be accessed from /mount
Linux For Vmware
Thin-provisioned VMDK’s are copied as Pre-Allocated VMDK’s
I copied all the vm’s to my local Linux file system, but had some issues with the thin-provisoned vmdk’s. The become pre-allocated vmdk’s which uses a lot of space. With the following command you can convert them back to growing disks:
Conclusion
Installing the VMFS drives on Linux / CentOS can be usefull in case of migrations, but also in case of an emergency. It is realative easy to browse you’re VMFS filesystem from a non-VMware host.
Vmware Workstation Linux Download
