"Thin" disks showing as "thick" in the VMware client during a replication cycle (90789)

During a replication in vRanger 5.x Backup & Replication, The source and target VMs are configured with "thin"-provisioned disks, yet the VMWare client "Edit Settings" page for each VM (source and target VMs) shows the disks to be "thick"-provisioned. Why is this happening?

This is normal behavior. Unlike vReplicator 3, vRanger 5 replication takes a snapshot of BOTH source and target VMs. Snapshots cannot be "thin"-provisioned, so when the .vmx file of both VMs is edited to point to the snapshot instead of the "flat" disk file, the description of the disk in the VMware client changes to "thick" for each disk on the VMs.

Once the replication pass is complete, the snapshots will be deleted, and the description of the disks should revert to "thin"-provisioned. If this does not happen, it may indicate that the VM has a "stuck" or "orphaned" snapshot on it, and that snapshot should be consolidated prior to running further backups/replications.