<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
I have a Windows 2008R2 500GB VMWare virtual disk I'd like to shrink. &nbsp;After I reconfigure the VM with the reduced virtual disk size, I do a Shrink Volume in Windows, but how do i get the actual VMDK size to decrease on VMFS? &nbsp;Keep in mind this is for a thick provisioned virtual disk.
</div>
</div>


I have a Windows 2008R2 500GB VMWare virtual disk I'd like to shrink.  After I reconfigure the VM with the reduced virtual disk size, I do a Shrink Volume in Windows, but how do i get the actual VMDK size to decrease on VMFS?  Keep in mind this is for a thick provisioned virtual disk.

VMWare: Shrink VMDK size of Thick Provisioned Virtual Disk

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

VMware

Virtualization is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, including (but not limited to) a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources. Virtualization is usually the creation of a system that executes separate from the underlying hardware resources, or the creation of an entire desktop for systems located elsewhere, similar to thin clients.

Virtualization

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, based on the Microsoft Vista codebase, is the last 32-bit server operating system released by Microsoft. It has a number of versions, including including Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, HPC Server, Itanium and Storage; new features included server core installation and Hyper-V.