Some things should be simple, shrinking a thin provisioned virtual disk should be one of them, it’s not. This will just reduce the VMDK’s usage on the VMFS datastore NOT resize the “provisioned size” of a thin disk. To shrink a VMDK we can use an ESX command line tool “vmkfstools”, but first you have to zero out any free space on your thin provisioned disk.

On Windows guests we can use the (replace the [DRIVE:] with the relevant Windows drive letter) you must use v1.6 or later!: sdelete.exe -z [DRIVE:] This will fill any unused space on the drive specified with zero-blocks. Caution: This operation will expand your thin-disk to its maximum size, ensure your datastore has the capacity to do this before you run this operation. As of v1.6 -c and -z have changed meanings, many instructions say -c zeros free space, this is no longer the case, it zeros the space then fills with random data in accordance with DOD spec: DOD 5220.22-M, the trigger to zero space with 0x00 has changed to -z! On linux guests use: dd if=/dev/zero of=/[PATH]/zeroes bs=4096 && rm -f /[PATH]/zeroes Again, replace [PATH] with the relevant path to a location on the target storage device. Next we will shut down the guest OS and SSH into the ESX shell, once in the shell we need to navigate to the VMDK’s datastore -> directory and we’ll check the VM’s actual size: du -h [DISKNAME].vmdk Punch all zeroed blocks out of the VMDK: vmkfstools --punchzero [DISKNAME].vmdk Check the size again (will now be less): du -h [DISKNAME].vmdk Of course, replace [DISKNAME] with your VMDK’s actual name. There we have it, all that free space, now reclaimed. Why not follow for more like this!

The same steps can be used to shrink a Windows drive. With Vista/2008 and newer the disk manager can be used to change the size of the partitions instead of Gparted or Gparted can be used as well. Related Articles (HowTo) Grow a VMDK with VMKFSTOOLS (HowTo) Convert a VMDK from Thick to Thin on ESX. Oct 15, 2017 - It is possible however to clone a VM's disk using the vmkfstools. Point to the copy of the VM disk that you created with the vmkfstools command. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on. Do WD Blue WD10SPZX drives work in a HP DL380 G7 without thermal runaway?

I tested the procedure on a test VM and I’m ok with this, so thank you!; on the production server, though, I’d like to verify wheter my datastore has the necessary free space in order to the expand vmdk to full size, BEFORE actually running SDELETE. Now, since I had a lot of deleted data recently (spring cleanups!) I have this numbers to work with: Provisioned Disk: 1.5 T Used Space (from Win OS): 562 Gb VMDK actual size is 1.128 Tb so if I run SDelete I’m going to need about 400 Gb free space on the datastore, right? Nice, succinct explanation, Myles. Am I correct in assuming the following: 1.

In VMware, the Provisioned Space represents how much space I set the size of the TP VMDK disk to be, and Used Space is how much of that VMDK is no longer considered free space by VMware? After running the steps outlined in your post, the free space in the VMDK will be aligned with the actual free space in the OS? 100GB provisioned, 100 GB used. After your steps, 60 GB used since Windows has 60GB used. This is the critical part for me. After running your steps, I want to “fix” the free space listed in the parent datastore for this VM (or VMs).

Does this happen automatically with the steps listed above? Or To do so, since I have 5.5, I can run the ‘esxcli storage vmfs unmap -l MyDatastore’ command. Or is that just to wipe unused space at the hardware level for thin provisioned hardware LUNs and has nothing to do with what a datastore in ESXi lists as free space? Relevant link: Thank you for your help! I hope VMware comes up with a solution for this that doesn’t involve downtime for servers.

Hey Amit, 1) Correct, Provisioned Space is how much space you set the VMDK to be when creating the VM (so if the disk is 300G, it’s 300G) – Used Space is the current size the thin-disk has expanded to out of those 300G. 2) Also correct, If you have a 100G thin-provisioned disk that has grown to say 80G through updates etc but Windows OS is only showing 60G usage after you run the steps above it will first grow to 100G, then you punchzero and it will align to 60G. Airtel ringtone for iphone. 3) Yes this is an automatic operation – the DS will show free space based on the total of the difference between provisioned space and used space for all VMs on that DS.