How to decrease Virtual Disk size?

With Parallels Image Tool, you can manage the properties of your virtual machine hard disk.
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can the same be applied for web hosting servers

 

Hello,

I'm using the Parallels Compressor Workstation (under Windows 7), I download and install it from here.

Hope it helps

 

Is it possible to reduce the size of virtual disk (and return the disk size to host OS)?
I know that to enlarge virtual disk can be done by vmware-vdiskmanager -x <n>[GB|MB]
Assume I have /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 under Ubuntu Linux
I now wanna remove /dev/sda3 completely. Is it possible to return all these spaces to host OS?

 

You can't reduce the size of the drive with VirtualBox. It may be possible with 3rd party software but very dangerous.
The dynamic size should not matter as long as you keep an eye on the actual size of the contents on the drive.

 

Shrinking a virtual hard disk is a different story and not the same thing. An non pre-allocated virtual hard disk can be shrunk thus allowing it to consume less Host disk space however if you defrag it from within the Guest OS after shrinking then it just grows and takes up more Host disk space!

 

I am always searching online for stuff that can help me. Thank you for your help.

 

HI,
To shrink your VM's virtual disks is a three step process:

1) Export your VM

To start this process, please navigate to the Configuration page for the VM in question. Ensure the VM is powered off (not running or suspended). Then, click the "Save as Template" button in the upper left-hand section of the screen (located directly under the "Templates" tab). If this Configuration contains more than one VM and/or network - on the snapshot page - please select only the single VM that you will be resizing, as well as only the pertinent networks associated with this VM. Then, click "Save as Template".

When the Template creation process has completed, you should be automatically re-directed to the new Template that has been created. Select the Constituent Machine. You should now be able to export this VM by clicking the "Export" button, which is located directly under the "Configurations" tab. This process may take a little while - when it has completed, you will be provided with FTP credentials to download your exported VM.

We would recommend downloading your image to a utility VM in Skytap so that you can take advantage of the higher transfer rates. We would also recommend using an FTP client such as WinSCP or FileZilla, that supports automatic resume should the connection be broken during transfer. Once the download has completed, use the 7zip utility (http://www.7-zip.org/) to extract the image from the archive.

For further information about exporting your VMs from Skytap, please see:
How to Export VMs out of Skytap


2) Use VMware Converter to re-size your virtual disks

VMware Converter can be downloaded for free here:
https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=converter&ie=UTF-8&q=vmware converter

Open VMware Converter, and click "Convert Machine". the "Source Type" is "VMware Workstation or other VMware Virtual Machine". Click "Browse" to find the VMX file in question. Then, click "Next". "Destination Type" is the same as "Source Type" from the previous page. "VMware Product" should be set to "VMware Workstation 8.0.x". Click "Browse" to select a location for your converted image (we would suggest a different location than the original to avoid confusion). Click "Next".

On the "Options" page, click the "Data to Copy" section. For "Data Copy Type" select "Select Volumes to Copy". For each virtual disk, you can enter the appropriate size in the pull-down menu. When you are ready, click "Next", and then "Finish".


3) Import your converted VM back to Skytap

When the above process completes, navigate to:
https://cloud.skytap.com/imports

Click "Create a new Import Job". You will be provided with FTP credentials for your new import upload depot. Upload the VMX and VMDK(s) to the depot, and then click "Ready to Create Template". (Of note: as you are performing this task from within your Skytap VM - it is not necessary to use the 7zip utility to compress your image first).
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Did you check ever your Parallels Compressor work. I think it may be not work properly.

 

Hi

Parallels Compressor was dropped long time ago. Compress functionality have some limitation but it works.
Do you have any issues with it?