Shrinking VMware Virtual Disks

The guest cannot have snapshots and it cannot be marked as a template from which clones are made.

In VMware Workstation:

• For Windows guests:
  • Start the guest system and log in
  • Open a command prompt window in administrator mode
  • C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe disk list
  • C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe disk shrink C:\
• For Linux guests:
  • Start the guest system and login as root
  • Open a terminal window
  • vmware-toolbox-cmd disk list
  • vmware-tool-box-cmd disk shrink /

In ESXi:

• For Linux guests:
  • Start the guest system and login as root through the vSphere Client console window
  • dd if=/dev/zero of=/zero.bin bs=16M
  • sync
  • rm /zero.bin
  • Shutdown the guest system
  • SSH to the ESXi server
  • Locate and change to directory that contains the guest's VMDK file
  • vmkfstools --punchzero <guest>.vmdk