Organizing the Data to Copy to the Destination Machine

Depending on the selected source and destination, you can choose what data to copy to the destination virtual machine as well as its location on specific datastores in your virtual environment.

For detailed information on data copy types, see Table 3.

Table 3. Data Copy Types

Data Copy Type	Supported Sources and Destinations	Description
Select volumes to copy	Source operating systems that support disk volumes	Volume-based cloning allows resizing the source volumes on the destination machine, volume reordering, and selection.
Select disks to copy	Virtual machine sources and hosted or managed destinations	Disk-based cloning does not allow resizing the source disks on the destination machine. For hosted destinations, you can change the disk type. For VMware Infrastructure destinations, you can change the datastore. You can locate source disks to different datastores only on managed destinations (VMware ESX, ESXi, or vCenter Server).
Linked clone	Hosted sources and hosted destinations	A linked clone allows you to create a VMware virtual machine that shares the virtual disk of the source virtual machine or system image.

Depending on the destination you select, several target disk types are available. To support target virtual disks on FAT file systems, split the source into 2GB files. For detailed information on target virtual disks types, see Table 4.

Table 4. Destination Disk Types

Destination	Available Disk Types
VMware Infrastructure virtual machine	■ Flat - Copies the entire source disk size to the destination, regardless of its used and free space. ■ Thin - For managed destinations that support thin provisioning, creates an expanding disk on the destination. For example, if the source disk size is 10GB, but only 3GB are used space, the created destination disk is 3GB but potentially expands to 10GB.
VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine	■ Pre-allocated - Copies the entire source disk size to the destination, regardless of its used and free space. ■ Not pre-allocated - Creates an expanding disk on the destination. For example, if the source disk size is 20GB, but only 5GB are used space, the created destination disk is 5GB but potentially expands to 20GB. Take this measurement into account when you calculate the free disk space on the destination datastore. ■ 2GB Split pre-allocated - Splits the source disk into 2GB sections on the destination. ■ 2GB Split not pre-allocated - Creates 2GB sections on the destination that include only the real used space on the source disk. As the destination disk grows, new 2GB sections are created to accommodate the new data until the original source disk size is reached.

 

■	Distribute Disks over Several Datastores

For managed destinations, disk-based cloning allows you to copy virtual disks to different datastores within your virtual environment.

■	Distribute Volumes over Several Datastores

To ease storage management, you can use the View/Edit Options page to migrate to separate disks all volumes except the active and system volumes.

■	Change the Target Datastore for a Destination Virtual Disk

Converter Standalone allows you to save destination disks to different datastores.

■	Create a Thin Provisioned Disk

Creating thin provisioned disks on managed destinations helps you use the storage space on your datastores more effectively. Thin provisioned disks contain only used space. As the target virtual machine adds data to them, their used space can expand to the original size of the source disk.

■	Create a Linked Clone

A linked clone is a VMware virtual machine that shares the virtual disk of the source virtual machine or system image. Linked clones are useful for quickly checking the compatibility of non-VMware images, such as .sv2i and .vmc files.

Related tasks

Modify the Settings in the Source Volumes List

Create or Delete a Target Disk

Move a Source Volume to a Target Virtual Disk

Change the Target Datastore for a Destination Virtual Disk