Installing multiple vm's sharing same resources.

Unknown

Im new to the vm world and had a question not sure if its a dumb one or not but figured i'd ask anyway. I am running esxi 4.1 with 1tb of space to run call manager suite ver 8. I wanted to install ver 7 also but wont have the resources to support running everything at once. I thought about it and realized I dont need to run ver 8 software while running ver 7.





My question is will it be a problem to have multiple vm's using the same resources but not running it at the same time. For example if I have a 500gb hard drive and already installed a vm requiring 350 gb of hdd. Will it be possible to install another vm requiring 250 gb of hdd and not run them at the same time? Or is that hard drive space already reserved for the first vm that i installed.

dave330i

You can thin provision the hdd and over provision which will allow you to run both VMs. Assuming thin provisioned hdd doesn't exceed 500 gb.

Legacy User

Where would the option thin provision and over provision be? Is it in the option when installing a new vm in vsphere client?

dave330i

When you create a new hdd for a VM, there's an option to thin provision the hdd. If the hdd is already created, you can switch it to thin using storage vMotion.

cyberguypr

This may come in handy: VMware vSphere Training: Storage - Thick & Thin Provisioning - YouTube

Legacy User

Yea thanks for the youtube link its pretty cut and dry. Something to play with once I get home.