1
I have a Centos VMware Image that I have recreated a couple times, and I notice that after a while it gets pretty large.
It starts out at 8 GBs when I make it, and a week or two later it is 25GB and then a month later it is a whole 50GB or so. I am not installing anything crazy on it, and my disk usage on the VM is pretty low. Is there an option that could be affecting the size of these VMs?
stevebot
Posted 2011-01-10T19:38:54.557
Reputation: 851
6
You want to make sure that you aren't taking "snapshots" of your Virtual Machine.
These snapshots store a 'version' of your machine so you can easily come back to it in case you mess things up in the future. It's similar to a backup, but it actually just snaps an image of the hard drive at that moment and stores all of the information in case you want to come back to it in the future.
akseli
Posted 2011-01-10T19:38:54.557
Reputation: 3 796
I didn't think of snapshots. +1 for you. – None – 2011-01-10T19:51:37.247
I'm using VMware player which I don't think allows you to do it (at least I don't see it exposed in the UI). – stevebot – 2011-01-10T19:52:42.837
1It takes a diff, not a full copy of the VM, but you're almost certainly right about what's happening. – CarlF – 2011-01-10T21:51:04.407
It actually wasn't making snapshots. This link helped: http://www.petri.co.il/virtual_vmware_files_explained.htm There were no VMSN or VMSD files, so no snapshots.
– stevebot – 2011-01-11T20:16:57.333It appears that my VM started churning out lots of vmdk files and that was what was causing the size issues. Still not sure why though. – stevebot – 2011-01-11T20:17:45.557
Yes. Auto-growth is enabled. – None – 2011-01-10T19:41:29.440
Any other VMs on this physical box? – IrqJD – 2011-01-10T19:45:39.283
yes, there is one other Windows 7 vm – stevebot – 2011-01-10T19:51:37.050