Reclaim thick provisioned space

[Alceryes]

I've got 5 VM with thick provisioned disks of various sizes on a datastore.

I'd like to reclaim some of the wasted space I provisioned on this host. Is there a way I can tell ESXi to reclaim unused space once I boot off a G-parted disc and reduce the partition size of the VM's? Is there any other way to do it? I only have a couple GB's left on the datastore.

TIA.

[mikelane]

I am not sure if you can do that with GParted on ESXi ... you could try using VMware Converter to move a VM to a Windows PC and then convert it back to ESXi using thin provisioning. I'm assuming that you have plenty of free space in your thick provisioned VMs right?

[john23]

mikelane is correct, convertor is the best tool to recalim the space from thick provisioning disk.

[AndreTheGiant]

With a partition program you will not change the vmdk size, but only the partition size inside the VM.

As written use the Converter.

Andre

[uninspired]

Couldn't you just *clone* it and use thin-provisioning on the target? That seems far preferable (and less prone to errors) than going from V2P and then back P2V.

[Cumulus]

So I assume you have no access to vCenter? You could just use sVmotion to do it. Other way would be converter as already pointed out.