Nonadministrative users in the guest operating system can shrink virtual disks. Shrinking a virtual disk reclaims the disk's unused space. However, if you shrink a virtual disk repeatedly, the disk can become unavailable and cause a denial of service. To prevent this, disable the ability to shrink virtual disks.

Prerequisites

  • Turn off the virtual machine.

  • Verify that you have root or administrator privileges on the virtual machine.

Procedure

  1. Log in to a vCenter Server system using the vSphere Web Client and find the virtual machine.
    1. In the Navigator, select VMs and Templates.
    2. Find the virtual machine in the hierarchy.
  2. Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
  3. Select VM Options.
  4. Click Advanced and click Edit Configuration.
  5. Add or edit the following parameters.
    Name Value
    isolation.tools.diskWiper.disable TRUE
    isolation.tools.diskShrink.disable TRUE
  6. Click OK.

Results

When you disable this feature, you cannot shrink virtual machine disks when a datastore runs out of space.