How to reclaim space from thin provisioned VM

Download sdelete from sysinternals for windows.  Run the following command for your drive letter.

sdelete.exe –z [DRIVE:]

Enable SSH for your VM host and locate the .vmdk file of the host.

To see the actual size run:

du –h [DISKNAME].vmdk

Punch all the zeroed blocks out of the vmdk.

vmkfstools —punchzero [DISKNAME].vmdk

That’s it.  You’ll notice the size of VM has decreased.