| Name | Description |
| eagerZeroedThick |
An eager zeroed thick disk has all space allocated and wiped clean
of any previous contents on the physical media at creation time.
Such disks may take longer time during creation compared to other
disk formats.
|
| flatMonolithic |
A preallocated monolithic disk. Disks in this format can be used with
other VMware products. This format is only applicable as a destination
format in a clone operation, and not usable for disk creation.
Since vSphere API 4.0
|
| preallocated |
A preallocated disk has all space allocated at creation time
and the space is zeroed on demand as the space is used.
|
| raw |
Raw device.
|
| rdm |
Virtual compatibility mode raw disk mapping. An rdm virtual disk
grants access to the entire raw disk and the virtual disk can
participate in snapshots.
|
| rdmp |
Physical compatibility mode (pass-through) raw disk mapping. An rdmp
virtual disk passes SCSI commands directly to the hardware, but the
virtual disk cannot participate in snapshots.
|
| seSparse |
A sparse (allocate on demand) format with additional space
optimizations.
Since vSphere API 5.1
|
| sparse2Gb |
A sparse disk with 2GB maximum extent size. Disks in this format
can be used with other VMware products. The 2GB extent size
makes these disks easier to burn to dvd or use on filesystems that
don't support large files. This format is only applicable as a
destination format in a clone operation, and not usable for disk
creation.
|
| sparseMonolithic |
A sparse monolithic disk. Disks in this format can be used with other
VMware products. This format is only applicable as a destination
format in a clone operation, and not usable for disk creation.
Since vSphere API 4.0
|
| thick |
A thick disk has all space allocated at creation time. This
space may contain stale data on the physical media. Thick disks
are primarily used for virtual machine clustering, but they are
generally insecure and should not be used. Due to better performance
and security properties, the use of the 'preallocated' format is
preferred over this format.
|
| thick2Gb |
A thick disk with 2GB maximum extent size. Disks in this format
can be used with other VMware products. The 2GB extent size
makes these disks easier to burn to dvd or use on filesystems that
don't support large files. This format is only applicable as a
destination format in a clone operation, and not usable for disk
creation.
|
| thin |
Space required for thin-provisioned virtual disk is allocated and
zeroed on demand as the space is used.
|