\n\t** Use this technique at your own risk. I do not and will not take responsibility for your corrupted vmdk’s as a result of following this process, whether correctly or incorrectly **\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIf you have ever taken a look at the descriptor file for a vmdk file, you will the “Extent description” section:\n<\/p>\n
\n\t# Extent description
\n\tRW 52428800 VMFS “foo-flat.vmdk”\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe value between ‘RW’ and ‘VMFS’ is the size of disk when divided by 512 and is in bytes:\n<\/p>\n
\n\t52428800 * 512 = 26843545600 (25G)\n<\/p>\n
\n\t-rw——- 1 root root 26843545600 Sep 18 19:10 foo-flat.vmdk
\n\t-rw——- 1 root root 370 Sep 18 19:11 foo.vmdk\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIf you want to shrink (or increase) the size of your vmdk file, alter this value in the descriptor file to reflect your new desired size*. You can do with this ‘vi’ or ‘nano’:\n<\/p>\n
\n\t* For this example we will to shrink the disk to 12.5G\n<\/p>\n
\n\t# Extent description
\n\tRW 26214400 VMFS “foo-flat.vmdk”\n<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter making this change you can use ‘vmkfstools -i’ to clone this disk:\n<\/p>\n
\n\t# vmkfstools -i foo.vmdk -d thin foo_1.vmdk
\n\tDestination disk format: VMFS thick
\n\tCloning disk ‘foo.vmdk’…
\n\tClone: 100% done.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tYou will discover that the cloned disk now reflects the new size of 12.5G:\n<\/p>\n
\n\t-rw——- 1 root root 13421772800 Sep 18 19:13 foo_1-flat.vmdk
\n\t-rw——- 1 root root 372 Sep 18 19:13 foo_1.vmdk
\n\t-rw——- 1 root root 26843545600 Sep 18 19:10 foo-flat.vmdk
\n\t-rw——- 1 root root 370 Sep 18 19:11 foo.vmdk\n<\/p>\n
\n\tthe -d parameter defines the disk type: zerothick, thin etc.\n<\/p>\n