Advanced recovery options: Format of restored virtual disks
Original provisioning | Restores the VM's virtual disks with their original provisioning. |
Thick provisioning lazy zeroed | Configures the restored virtual disks in the thick format. The virtual disk space is allocated when the disk is created. This option restores the populated blocks, but initializes vacant blocks with zeros later, on demand. Note: If the vmdk is completely written, VMware automatically converts a lazy-zeroed disk to Thick provisioning eager zeroed. |
Thick provisioning eager zeroed | Configures the restored virtual disks in the thick format. Restores the populated blocks and immediately initializes vacant blocks with zeros (eager zeroed). Creation of the virtual disks may take more time with this option. However, if the restore occurs over a SAN, the eager zeroed feature may speed up the restore by reducing network communication with the vCenter server. |
Thin provisioning | Configures the restored virtual disks in the thin format. Restores the populated blocks but does not initialize vacant blocks or commit them. Thin provisioning saves disk space through dynamic growth of the vmdk file. The vmdk files are no larger than the space that the data on the virtual machine requires. The virtual disks automatically increase in size as needed. Note: If the vmdk is completely written, VMware automatically converts a thin disk to Thick provisioning eager zeroed. |