How to move the vmdk (thin provisioned disk) between datastore within a same physical host (ESXi) and keep it in thin provisioned

For copying vmdk files, there is a tool called ‘vmkfstools’ available on the ESXi server.

The tool will reverts a vmdk which was blown up, back into a thin file.

The command format –> vmkfstools -i "source.vmdk" -d thin "destination.vmdk"

e.g. vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VM33/VM33.vmdk -d thin /vmfs/volumes/iSCSI/VM33_iSCSI/VM33.vmdk

Reference:

http://www.how2blog.de/?p=98
http://vaemon.com/article/910.html

How to move the vmdk (thin provisioned disk) between datastore within a same physical host (ESXi) and keep it in thin provisioned