Virtual Disk Development Kit

The Virtual Disk API, or VixDiskLib, is a set of function calls to manipulate virtual disk files in VMDK format (virtual machine disk). Function call semantics are patterned after C system calls for file I/O. This API enables partners and software vendors to manage VMDK directly from their applications. These library functions can manipulate virtual disk on a VMware Workstation or similar product (hosted disk) or virtual disk contained within a VMFS volume on an ESX Server (managed disk). Hosted disk is an original VMware concept meaning a disk managed by the Workstation host for a guest operating system. The Virtual Disk Development Kit is a collection of C libraries, code samples, utilities, and documentation to help you create or access VMware virtual disk storage. The kit includes:

 The Virtual Disk library, a set of C function calls to manipulate virtual disk (VMDK) files.
 C++ code samples that you can build with either Visual Studio or the GNU C compiler.
 Virtual Disk Manager utility to manipulate offline VMDK files on Windows or Linux (clone, create, relocate, rename, grow, shrink, or defragment).
 DiskMount utility to access files and file systems in virtual disks on Windows or Linux.
 Documentation about the Virtual Disk library and the command-line utilities.