This is the simplest solution to this problem. There are two other
possible fixes I considered:
Increase the documented limit (see
http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v-input-vmware.1.html#vddk:-esxi-nfc-service...).
However at the moment we know the current limit works through
extensive testing (without readahead), plus I have no idea nor any way
to test if larger limits are supported by all versions of VMware new
and old. The limit we are recommending at the moment is the one
documented by VMware. Also this would require users to change their
VMware settings again, and no doubt introduce confusion for people who
have already adjusted them who might not understand that they need to
adjust them again for a v2v minor release.
Or splitting large requests in nbdkit-vddk-plugin, but it's a bit
silly to coalesce requests in a filter and then split them up at a
later stage in the pipeline, not to mention error-prone when you
consider multithreading etc.
Rich.