What Is Virtual Disk Manager and How to Manage VM?

Virtualization technology has been developed for many years and more and more companies have realized the advantages of virtual environment over physical environment. IT administrators need to get new knowledge to manage virtual environment.

What is virtual disk manager?

First, let's get to know what is virtual disk.

On a physical machine, hard disk is used to store applications and other data and on the virtual machine, it is the virtual disk that stores the data. User can use it to make backup or migrate data. Virtual disk is not hardware like physical hardware, it is just a file in the folder of VM.

In different virtual environment, you can find different formats of virtual disks like vmdk virtual disk in VMware environment, vhd virtual disk in Hyper-V environment, xva virtual disk in XenServer environment, qcow2/raw virtual disk in KVM environment, ect.

Virtual disk manager is used to manage these files like renaming, converting, cloning, virtual disk. Virtual disks exist as different formats of files in different virtual environment so some virtual disk manager can be used only in single virtual environment and some can let you manage multiple kinds of virtual disk. You should know what can they do and select the proper one for your virtual environment.

VMware virtual disk manager

VMware virtual disk is saved as vmdk file. If you have vCenter deployed in IT environment, you can find the location of vmdk virtual disk of VM in vCenter and copy it to another datacenter.

VMware virtual disk manager, vmware-vdiskmanager, can help users manage virtual disks in VMware Workstation, ESX/ESXi, etc. It can help users create, convert, resize, rename, relocate, and defragment with scripts.

For example, if you would like to have a new VMware virtual disk, you need to type:

vmware-vdiskmanager -c -a lsilogic -s 30GB -t 0 mydisk.vmdk

This command will help you create a 30GB of virtual disk.

-c: create a local virtual disk

-a: specify the disk adapter type (ide/buslogic/lsilogic)

-s: specify the size of the virtual disk

-t: specify the virtual disk type

By the way, VMware vmkftools command to manage volume, virtual disks, etc. in VMware environment.

Hyper-V virtual disk manager

Hyper-V VM uses .vhd virtual disk and in the latest version of Hyper-V VM, it is .vhdx format of virtual disk that used to store VM data.

Since you know the format of Hyper-V virtual disk, you can simply find the vhd/vhdx file in the directory of Hyper-V VM or you can use Hyper-V Manager.

Hyper-V Manager is often used to create and manage the entire VMs but you can also use it to export and import Hyper-V virtual disk. Just right-click the virtual machine, export the entire VM and then find the virtual disk in the folder.

KVM virtual disk manager

Unlike VMware and Hyper-V, KVM is an open-source virtualization solution and its users often manage the virtual environment with scripts like virsh command. There is also Red Hat Virtual Machine Manager to help user create and manage VMs with user-friendly GUI.

KVM virtual machine often uses qcow2 or raw format of virtual hard disk. If the virtual disk needs to be imported to other virtual environments like VMware or other virtual disks like vmdk file needs to be used in KVM environment, users can use qemu-img to convert the virtual disk making it compatible in the new environment.

Manage and protect virtual environment

Managing virtual disk can help protect data and improve work efficiency, but virtual disk level protection is not enough. You can have virtual machine level protection with Vinchin Backup & Recovery.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a professional backup and disaster recovery solution for multiple virtualization platforms including VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, XenServer (Citrix Hypervisor), Red Hat Virtualization, Oracle Linux Virtualization, etc.

There is a user-friendly web console to let you monitor the backup system to make sure every VM in under protection. A lot of backup strategies can let you protect VM in every way including schedule, data compression, data encryption, GFS retention policy, etc.

Instant Recovery can let you quickly recover failed VM and Cross-Platform Recovery can let you move VM between different virtualization platforms.

You can have a 60-day full-featured free trial to experience this brilliant system. Just click the button to get the installation package.

Sum Up

Virtual machine has virtual disk to store data and users can use the virtual disk to make backup or migrate data. To simplify related procedures, virtual disk manager is often needed by users.

There are different virtual disk managers for different virtual environments so you have to pick the right one.

Of course, you can use Vinchin Backup & Recovery to get virtual machine level protection for your virtual environment. Don't miss the free trial.