All we're doing is copying a VM from a vSphere environment to a local workstation to be run using VMware Workstation. We have an automated process in place (using Veeam) which has been working well for us, but we recently added an independent, nonpersistent thin disk to this VM image. The sole purpose of this disk is to store the Windows page file and %temp% folder.
Unfortunately moving to using OVF templates would require much more overhead to this process including the requirement of having a powered off machine and then re-deploying again once copied down. Also, don't OVF templates reset the OS GUID, requiring things like Windows and Office licenses to be reactivated?
Any other alternatives to in getting the unprovisioned, thin disk copied from our vSphere environment to another location to run in Workstation?
Thanks again!