title: Convert qcow2 to vmdk and make it ESXi 6.0 Compatible
body: <p>I am currently working on VMWare virtualization; I am trying to make a converted image from qcow2 to vmdk work with ESXi Server 6.0. </p>
  
  <p>I have myImage.qcow2 with a disk which is thin provisioned for 300GB.</p>
  
  <p>I used the image converter tool qemu with the following command </p>
  
  <pre><code>qemu-img convert -f qcow2 myImage.qcow2 -O vmdk myNewImage.vmdk 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This command gives me a vmdk image which is only VMWare Workstation compatible. Therefore, in order to make it ESXi compatible I have to use the vmkfstools with the following command.</p>
  
  <pre><code>vmkfstools -i myImage.vmdk outputName.vmdk -d thin
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The vmkfstools command gives me two files, an metadata.vmdk and the actual data.vmdk. </p>
  
  <p>As mentioned above my disk is thin provisioned for 300GB and when I apply vmkfstools it expands the disk and gives me a size of 300GB. </p>
  
  <p>Deploying the image through the vSphere Client works without any problem; however,  for the purpose of this project I want to use the ovftool and doing so with such a large image is not feasible. </p>
  
  <p>Is there a way for me to make my .vmdk ESXi compatible without vmkfstools expanding my image to 300GB? </p>
  
  <p>Or Is there any other method for me to deploy those 300GB using the ovftool while the disk image is on the datastore, so that it doesn't have to be downloaded/uploaded through the deployment process?</p>
  
  <p>I have been stuck on this for weeks and any help will be highly appreciated.</p>