Mount a VMware .vmdk File
After years of using VMware products, I still stumble over features and utilities all the time. Here’s my latest discovery.
I hate to risk losing data or configurations so before I retire a server I convert it to a virtual machine. The same with employee PCs. When someone leaves, I convert it to a VM before it gets rebuilt for the next use. I can’t deny that this habit has saved more more than once over the past few years when you suddenly realize a key file only existed on Billy’s machine – and Billy’s old machine has been reloaded twice since he left! Just fire up the virtual machine and grab that file.
There’s a small wrinkle though. After converting servers and desktops to VMs for a few years, the storage needs grow dramatically! Storing VMs is the primary purpose for my Openfiler server (first mentioned). However, now when I need to fire up a machine it is a lot more tedious moving the VM image to the ESXi server or my local VMware Workstation machine (powering them up over the LAN is even more tedious imho).
While watching one copy last week I wondered aloud, “Wouldn’t it be handy if I could just treat that virtual hard drive (.vmdk) like any other drive?” VMware was already way ahead of me. Enter the VMware Workstation Disk Mount Utility. Note: There’s not much to see at that link. Just accept the agreement and you’ll get the download.
This is a command line utility so a glance at the docs wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Run vmware-mount with no arguments to see what is currently mounted. To mount a .vmdk file to a drive letter run
vmware-mount [driveletter:] [path to .vmdk] [arguments]
This works fine even while the .vmdk file is on another server. Assuming you have proper access you can specify the “path to .vmdk” portion in UNC form (\\servername\share\path\to\file.vmdk). As you might guess, this saves me a lot of time shuffling around big files over the network.
When done just run vmware-mount [driveletter:] /d to dismount it.
One small note: While this has worked for me every time I’ve used it, it may have quirks.
Possibly Related posts:
- VMware Converter
- VMware ESXi Goes Free — Hmmm…
- VMware Fusion 2 Beta
- Virtually Machining
- VMware Server Bridging Problem (fixed)
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2 Responses to “Mount a VMware .vmdk File”
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Flair and Sparklies
Handy. Thanks!
I agree, this is a very handy tool.
I wish there was some comparable tool for Linux, but my shops tend to be mostly Windows anyway, so whatever.
My bigger concern for Linux is I wish there was a .vmdk resizer for Linux, for those VM Servers running on Linux.
In anycase – good reminder of the VMWare tools out there.
Thanks