The boilerplate answer is to shrink the VMDK... but these Linux VMs use an ext4 filesystem, which VMware does not support shrinking with their conventional tools (i.e. vmware-toolbox).

The VMDK file format is used for virtual machine (VM) disk image files. VMDK files contain a complete and independent virtual machine and are commonly used with VMware virtual appliances.

In terms of windows file servers, I do not present the LUN directly to the VM, but instead just use a VMDK file. Performance seems to work out the same either way, but its a lot easier to move ...

Using VMware can save labor costs related to testing, because when a virtual machine crashes, it can quickly be rebooted or reinstalled. The virtual disks (files with the filename *.vmdk) are ...

What does each do? Let's take a few minutes to look at the files, and specifically the file extensions, that you'll see within each virtual machine's folder to help you understand the role of each: ...