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A flat image allocates space ahead of time while a sparse image grows as the virtual machine writes to it. Flat images can use the underlying file system's sparse file capability, as is done with the vmfs format on ESXi. An image can also refer to a parent image and only store changes made in a copy-on-write fashion. This enables creating a ...
VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is VMware, Inc.'s clustered file system used by the company's flagship server virtualization suite, vSphere. It was developed to store virtual machine disk images, including snapshots. Multiple servers can read/write the same filesystem simultaneously while individual virtual machine files are locked.
VirtualBox emulates hard disks in three formats: the native VDI (Virtual Disk Image), [36] VMware's VMDK, and Microsoft's VHD. It thus supports disks created by other hypervisor software. VirtualBox can also connect to iSCSI targets and to raw partitions on the host, using
A virtual appliance is a pre-configured virtual machine image, ready to run on a hypervisor; virtual appliances are a subset of the broader class of software appliances. Installation of a software appliance on a virtual machine and packaging that into an image creates a virtual appliance.
Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for packaging and distributing virtual appliances or, more generally, software to be run in virtual machines.. The standard describes an "open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of software to be run in virtual machines".
Virtual disk images can be stored in QCOW format, which can significantly reduce image size. QCOW images only occupy the actual used disk space, not the full configured capacity. This means a configured 120 GB disk may only occupy a few hundred megabytes on the host, as QCOW does not store unused disk space in the image file.
Virtual Floppy Disk (VFD) is a related file format used by Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Automated Deployment Services and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. [17] [18] [19] A VFD that contains an image of a 720 KB low-density, 1.44 MB high-density or 1.68 MB DMF 3.5-inch floppy disk can be mounted by Virtual PC.
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination of the two.