How to convert a thick provisioned disk to thin provisioned disk

If you created a virtual machine with Thick disks and want to convert it to thin provisioned disk please follow the below steps

Step 1 : Power off the virtual machine
Step 2 : Using putty login to the ESX/ESXi server console
Step 3 : Go the virtual machine directory where the virtual machine files are stored
Step 4 : Backup the virtual machine configuration file
Step 5 : Using vmkfstools command convert the thick disk to thin disk

# vmkfstools -i <thickdisk.vmdk> -d thin <newname.vmdk>

Once executed thick disk will be cloned to thin disk. After this process completed u must see two disk created with the newname ie (newname.vmdk and newname-flat.vmdk)

Step 6 : Open the virtual machine configuration file using vi editor
Step 7 : Locate for the old vmdk file name in virtual machine configuration file and replace it with new vmdk file
Step 8 : Make sure u are able to power on the virtual machine without any issues.
Step 9 : Then delete the old vmdk files