How do I shrink a VMware virtual machine and free up disk space?

How do I shrink a VMware virtual machine and free up disk space?

The Shrinking Process

1. Launch the control panel.
2. Click the Shrink tab.
3. Select the virtual disks you want to shrink, then click Prepare to Shrink.
4. Click Yes when VMware Tools finishes wiping the selected disk partitions.
5. Click OK to finish.

How do you shrink a thick provisioned VMDK?

You can try a Storage vMotion and select thin provisioning on the destination route:

1. Right-click the virtual machine, and click Migrate.
2. Click Change datastore.
3. Click Next, and select a datastore that is not the same as the current datastore.
4. From the dropdown, select the Thin Provision virtual disk format.

How do you change thick provisioned to thin provisioning in VMware?

Convert thick provisioned to thin with vmkfstools in ESXi Shell (command line)

1. Check VMware hard disk type.
2. Shut down VM.
3. Enable SSH on VMware ESXi host.
4. SSH into the ESXi host.
5. Navigate to the VM folder.
6. Clone the VMDK to a thin provisioned disk using vmkfstools.
7. Rename old flat file.
8. Rename new flat file.

Can you change a VM from thick to thin provisioning?

To change vmdk from Thick to Thin provisioning If only a single datastore exists, you can clone the virtual machine to a destination machine with thin provisioned disks instead of migrating. Right-click the virtual machine and select Migrate. Select Change storage only and click Next.

What is thick provisioned lazy zeroed?

Thick provision lazy zeroed is a provisioning format for a virtual machine (VM) disk that creates a virtual disk in a default thick format. Thick provision means all the space designated for the virtual disk files is reserved when the VM is created.

Can you shrink a VMDK file?

The only supported method of shrinking a VMware virtual machine disk (VMDK) is to use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone and create a virtual to virtual (V2V) conversion, a similar process to a Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion. V2V Conversions can be slow.

Can you change a VM from thin to thick provisioning?

To change vmdk from Thin to Thick provisioning To change the provisioning of a virtual machine base disk from thin to thick from the Datastore Browser: In vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine in the inventory. Click Edit Settings to display the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box.

Do thin provisioned disks shrink?

Having thin provisioned disk is usually no longer a performance problem so it is a valid design choice even in production. A common issue with thin disks is that the size will grow when required, but never shrink. When you require the capacity only once you might want to get it back from the virtual machine.

How do I increase the size of my thick provisioned disk?

Increasing the Thick Eagerzeroed Disk Size

1. First Method:- Remove the VM from Inventory > Then Add to Inventory.
2. Second Method:- Reload the .vmx File.
3. You can keep your VM in Power On State to Reload the .vmx file.
4. Obtain the Inventory ID ( Vmid ) for the virtual machine using this command:
5. Reference KB’s:-

How do you shrink a virtual disk in VMware?

Verify that the host has free disk space equal to the size of the virtual disk that you plan to shrink. Open a command prompt or terminal in the guest operating system. Change to the VMware Tools installation directory. Type the command to list available mount points. For utility-name use the guest-specific program name.

How to reclaim disk space with storage vMotion and thin?

2) Use Storage vMotion along with thin provisioning in vSphere to resize the disk on the VMFS partition but leave it the original size in the guest. The size of the disk will grow as data is written to the VM. Most of the time option 2 works without a problem.

Is it good to use thin provisioning in vSphere?

If you’re going to use thin provisioning in vSphere, make sure you have the proper alerts setup in vCenter to notify you when space is getting tight. It’s a great way to better utilize disk space as well as reclaim space without downtime.

Is there a way to reclaim disk space?

While it is easy and relatively painless to reduce CPU and memory, reducing the size of a virtual disk to reclaim some space on your VMFS partition isn’t as straightforward. Still easy, just not straightforward. You have two solutions to the problem depending on how you want to reclaim the space: