Comments on How To Shrink VMware Virtual Disk Files (.vmdk)

Thank you very much. This was very useful. I reduced the size of my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 VM image from 47 GB to 27 GB. Cheers. Manish

Actually the vmware-vdiskmanager -k option does not work for Linux guest OS images. It's really weird at first. However, after seeing the workaround. I understand.

Thank you very much guys for the tips.

 cat /dev/zero > zero.fill;sync;sleep 1;sync;rm -f zero.fill

Works like a charm!!!

VMware Tools installed in a Windows guest has a "shrink disk" option.  How does that compare with vdiskmanager?

@jhansonxi

I think vdiskmanager can shrink the vmdk 'offline'. While VMWare tools require the guest os on.

 The other thing to consider is that if you run a Linux VM with no X, pure text mode, you will not be able to shrink it even with vmware tools. So it is better to do it offline using the tool. That's the point why VMWare Inc makes another tool available.

And thanks Falko for the great article!

WinMount supports mounting VMDK file as a virtual disk

1. Using right-click menu

On VMDK right-click drop down menu, click "WinMount3 -> Mount to new drive", WinMount will mount it to a new virtual disk.

. Mount to new drive : Mount the VMDK file to a new virtual drive.
. Mount to...: Assign a disk letter for the VMDK file. (Refer to "How to assign a disk?" on the bottom of this page.)

2. Using toolbar

1) Click the button "Mount File" on the toolbar of WinMount main interface;

2) Select a VMDK files, click "ok". WinMount will mount it to a new virtual disk.

3. Using drag

Drag a VMDK file to WinMount main interface, WinMount will mount it to a new virtual disk.

How to assign a disk?

Of course, you can assign a disk for the VMDK file, such as H: or K: or whatever you like.

1) Click the button "Mount to" on the toolbar of WinMount main interface( or right-click the VMDK file and select "Mount to...").

2) Select a VMDK file, select a drive, then WinMount would mount the VMDK file to the assigned disk.

You can also input a path for the VMDK file.
For example, select "H:\" and input "folder\folder1", then the VMDK file would be mount to "H:\folder\folder1".

From my experiance VMDK files might slow down your system preformance even if they are configured as preallocated there for there are two steps you should do in order to improve VMDK preformance,  first make sure the .vmdk file is a flat file and you must make sure the file is not fragmented there are linux utilities loke conit which make sure the file is not fragmented second once to a while recreate the file with the orginal size vmware-vdiskmanager -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 2 targetDisk.vmdk , i did it and it improve my guest OS significant,  you are welcome to visit my linuxstorage blog  (this is not spam ;)  best wishes
 http://mylinuxstorage.com/2010/09/%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%a8%d7%aa-%d7%93%d7%99%d7%a1%d7%a7-%d7%95%d7%99%d7%a8%d7%98%d7%95%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%99-%d7%91%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%91%d7%a5-vmdk-%d7%9c%d7%a4%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%9e%d7%98-%d7%97%d7%93%d7%a9/

http://kegel.com/linux/jeos-vmware-player/jeos-vmware-player-howto.html is my recipe for how to do it; this produced an 87 megabyte downloadable virtual machine.

On the Windows side the VMware Converter may also be an option. You can convert an existing VM(Virtual Appliance) from your local disc, by selecting it as your Source/Source Type and then in your destination settings adjust the New Disk Space — you'll see a difference between Maintain Size and Minimal Size. I was able to shrink from a 29G to a 7G VM, after I deleted a lot of unwanted files from the initial conversion. It has worked with W2k, XP and Ubuntu 6.06 VMs for me.

VMWare Coverter doesn't work for this. The key is to fill with zeros (or other char). You can also use Compact option from VMWare Workstation. But key is to fill with zeros.

Tomek

The zero fill technique helps, but I found that I had to the following:

1. Write a file filled with non-zeros.
   
2. Run sync
3. Replace that file with all zeros.
4. Run sync.
5. Remove the zero fill file.
6. Shutdown the OS and then run the shrink.

I tried this when I noticed that writing all zeros does not change the size of the underlying vmdk.  I assume there is an optimization somewhere that handles the zero case.

What is the syntax used to fill a file with non-zeros?

 Thanks!

cat /dev/random > random.fill

Or make a loop for any specific char you may want.

If you want to squish the image size down in linux, you can convert the disk type to the same type after filling the free space with zeroes (as shown above). For example:

 vmware-vdiskmanager -r olddiskfile.vmdk -t 0 newdiskfile.vmdk

Seems to work better for me than the defrag util. Which doesn't seem to do much. 

Just so people know (and to remind myself when I google back to this page!) vmware-vdiskmanager on Mac VMWare Fusion is in /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion. The Mac version accepts both -k and -d parameters.

Hi,

In our setup we use Lab Manager; this is similar to VMWare player/workstation with heavy utilization of linked clone.

The image I try to shrink is a child/clone of a consolidated disk image. I have run fillzero at level 0, I have copied 4Gb of data and run fill zero on image level 1.
The delta file of vmdk was 4Gb after copying/deleting the file, and then 20Gb after running fill-zero (because fill-zero creates a file of the full amound of free space 20Gb)

I copied the level 1 image vmdk file and when I run shrink (vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -k "filename"), I get error:
Failed to open the disk "filename" : The specified virtual disk needs repair (0xe00003e86).

(log file showssame error with "Failed to check Header")

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -R has no effect and returns same error in vdiskmanager.log

Thanks

Julien

Hi, it seem that latest vmware tools installed on guest are able to Shrink and wipe VMware Virtual Disk Files. On my linux guest I launch: root@ubuntu:~#apt-get clean root@ubuntu:~#vmware-toolbox-cmd disk shrink / That's all :-) root@ubuntu:~# vmware-toolbox-cmd -v 9.2.0.15626 (build-799703) root@ubuntu:~# vmware-toolbox-cmd help disk disk: perform disk shrink operations Usage: vmware-toolbox-cmd disk [args] Subcommands: list: list available locations shrink : wipes and shrinks a file system at the given location shrinkonly: shrinks all disks wipe : wipes a file system at the given location

Fred, lifesaver. This was by far the simplest way to shrink the guest disk images. Glag I stumbled on this, thank you.

I found a version that works on http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1023856 in the "Attachments" section.

see: http://stackoverflow.com/a/28391167/1069083

Hi guys, I have done a lot of testing with Windows guest, also vmware-vdiskmanager didn't work for me (Workstation Pro 12). Here: https://wiitez.blogspot.sg/2016/12/vm-image-compression-and-optimization.html

Hello

We are creating a VMDK format file with this command:

qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O vmdk /image2/syst00.qcow2 cust2.vmdk

This created a huge file of 32GB. Is there any way to create break this into multiple files of less then 8GB so they fit in DL DVD's?