Importing vmdk images (no convert) and backups

[PretoX]

Hi guys,
a quick story:

I was searching for the way of running vmdk images (esxi5.1) without any conversion, so after a bit of googling:
1. I took the PBX.vmdk (small text file, see quote) and PBX-flat.vmdk (8 Gb) partition data, placed in the correct dir;
2. renamed PBX.vmdk to vm-112-disk-1.vmdk;
3. set the cache to writeback;
4. launch VM,proxmox shows the HDD attached to VM has 1kb sized disk (see quote);
5. I want to be sure I'm able to backup&restore VM with all files present, so I do backup and it hopefully does a backup of full drive image (8Gb in my case);
6. I run restore of VM but it restores to RAW file format with image size 30Gb!;
Config files:

root@PM1-BNE2:/VM-DATA/RAWDATA/images/112# ls
PBX-flat.vmdk vm-112-disk-1.vmdk
root@PM1-BNE2:/VM-DATA/RAWDATA/images/112# cat vm-112-disk-1.vmdk
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=3
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=fa6d128d
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="vmfs"

# Extent description
RW 62914560 VMFS "PBX-flat.vmdk"

# Change Tracking File
changeTrackPath="PBX-ctk.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.deletable = "true"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.thinProvisioned = "1"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "3916"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9b 5f 3d 20 ef-67 84 83 6c 6b e9 db ad"
ddb.longContentID = "00a2a5a3f609523e6d438ee0fdb588ba"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "8"

/etc/pve/local/qemu-server/112.conf
boot: cdn
bootdisk: sata0
cores: 1
ide2: none,media=cdrom
memory: 256
name: FW-PBX
net0: e1000=CA:5F:5A:42:B7:FB,bridge=vmbr0,link_down=1
numa: 0
ostype: other
sata0: RAWDATA:112/vm-112-disk-1.vmdk,cache=writeback,size=1K
scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
smbios1: uuid=2a1a65f8-91b9-426b-a4f1-621ee05eee2b
sockets: 1

And restored config:

118.conf
boot: cdn
bootdisk: sata0
cores: 1
ide2: none,media=cdrom
memory: 256
name: FW-PBX
net0: e1000=CA:5F:5A:42:B7:FB,bridge=vmbr0,link_down=1
numa: 0
ostype: other
sata0: RAWDATA:118/vm-118-disk-1.raw,cache=writeback,size=30G
scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
smbios1: uuid=2a1a65f8-91b9-426b-a4f1-621ee05eee2b
sockets: 1

And my questions:
1. Does the backup convert images with "qemu-img convert" to raw each time I use other formats than RAW as storage option?
2. Why it sets raw file size to 30Gb?
And main Q:
3. Is it safe to act like I did for VM's?

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

And my questions:
1. Does the backup convert images with "qemu-img convert" to raw each time I use other formats than RAW as storage option?
2. Why it sets raw file size to 30Gb?
And main Q:
3. Is it safe to act like I did for VM's?

1.) The backup is similar a raw container.
2.) Could it be that the vmdk has total 30GB. The partition size is not important only the vdisk size.
3.) vmdk is not recommended for productive machines. if you want thin provision use qcow2.
VMDK is slow and has no features with kvm.