Virtual Disk API Programming Guide - Documentation - VMware

Virtual Disk Programming Guide
vix-diskLib-sample -meta -host esx3 -user admin -password secret "[storage1]RHEL5/RHEL5.vmdk"
geometry.sectors = 63
geometry.heads = 255
geometry.cylinders = 522
adapterType = buslogic
toolsVersion = 1
virtualHWVersion = 7
Tools version and virtual hardware version appear in the metadata, but not in the disk information retrieved
by “DoInfo()” on page 46. Geometry information and adapter type are repeated, but in a different format.
Other metadata items not listed above might exist.
DoDump()
This procedure calls VixDiskLib_Read() to retrieve sectors and displays sector contents on the output in
hexadecimal. The default is to dump only the first sector numbered zero, but you can change this with the
-start and -count options. Here is a sequence of commands to demonstrate:
vix-disklib-sample -create sample.vmdk
vix-disklib-sample -fill -val 1 sample.vmdk
vix-disklib-sample -fill -val 2 -start 1 -count 1 sample.vmdk
vix-disklib-sample -dump -start 0 -count 2 sample.vmdk
od -c sample.vmdk
On Linux (or Cygwin) you can run the od command to show overhead and metadata at the beginning of file,
and the repeated ones and twos in the first two sectors. The -dump option of the sample program shows only
data, not overhead.
DoTestMultiThread()
This procedure employs the Windows thread library to make multiple copies of a virtual disk file. Specify the
number of copies with the -multithread command‐line option. For each copy, the sample program calls the
CopyThread() procedure, which in turn calls a sequence of six Virtual Disk API routines.
On Linux the multithread option is unimplemented.
DoClone()
This procedure calls VixDiskLib_Clone() to make a copy of the data on virtual disk. A callback function,
supplied as the sixth parameter, displays the percent of cloning completed. For local hosted disk, the adapter
type is SCSI unless specified as IDE on the command line, size is 200MB, unless set by -cap option, and type
is monolithic sparse, for Workstation 5. For an ESX/ESXi host, adapter type is taken from managed disk itself,
using the connection parameters established by VixDiskLib_Connect().
The final parameter TRUE means to overwrite if the destination VMDK exists.
The clone option is an excellent backup method. Often the cloned virtual disk is smaller, because it can be
organized more efficiently. Moreover, a fully allocated flat file can be converted to a sparse representation.
SSL Certificate Thumbprint
The sample program in the VDDK 5.1 release added the -thumb option to allow an SSL Certificate thumbprint
to be provided and used. The thumbprint is used for authentication through vCenter Server.
48 VMware, Inc.