Eager Zero your Lazy Zero VMDK

Have a reason to eager zero your VMDK? Need to increase your initial write performance?  Here’s how to do it;

1. Use SSH to putty directly to the host your VM resides on
2. Navigate to the folder the VMDK resides in.  This usually looks like:  /vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/VMName/
3. Get the name of the disk you need to thick provision.  This is easiest done by using the fat or thick client.  You can edit the VM settings, find the disk you need to thick provision, and locate the name of the VMDK
4. In your SSH session, type “vmkfstools –eagerzero ./TheNameOfYourVMDK.vmdk” and hit enter

The length of time this takes is purely dependent on the size of the VMDK.

(Kind of a repost – process is almost exactly the same as thin to thick process)