Each VM will have access to up to three (3) virtual hard disks. These disks may be partitioned in any manner to suit the application. In addition, a VM may have access to a virtual floppy disk image, as well as to a virtual CD/DVD image.

When planning how the application will be arranged on a VM, it is strongly recommended that the primary hard disk image contain the guest OS and the installed application. The other virtual disks should be used for persistent or temporary data storage (including configuration information). Each disk image can be upgraded independently, as each disk image is fetched separately when installed.

Corente makes this recommendation because you may want to update the main virtual hard disk of the VM with a new version or copy of the .vdi file at some point in the future. When a new file is applied to a virtual hard disk, the existing .vdi file for that disk on the VM will be completely overwritten. Therefore, any persistent or temporary data stored on that disk will be deleted permanently. If you have arranged a VM so that you are storing data on a virtual disk that must be updated, you can avoid losing the data by logging into the VM and copying the data out before updating. However, because entire .vdi files cannot be retrieved from a CVSG-VE Location once they are installed, it is easier to avoid a time-consuming data copying process by simply arranging the VM so that persistent or temporary data is stored on another virtual disk during normal operation of the VM.