Howto Shrink a VM

First, run a script similar to the following, one for each significant mountpoint as defined in /etc/fstab

#!/bin/sh

cd /
cat /dev/zero > zero.fill;sync;sleep 1;sync;rm -f zero.fill
cd /tmp
cat /dev/zero > zero.fill;sync;sleep 1;sync;rm -f zero.fill
cd /home
cat /dev/zero > zero.fill;sync;sleep 1;sync;rm -f zero.fill
cd /var
cat /dev/zero > zero.fill;sync;sleep 1;sync;rm -f zero.fill
cd /usr
cat /dev/zero > zero.fill;sync;sleep 1;sync;rm -f zero.fill

# Delete this script

rm -rf /usr/local/jboss/server/default/log/*
cd /root/tools
rm -rf shrink.sh

Then shutdown the vm and close vmware workstation.
Run the following command at the Windows Command Interpreter.

vmware-vdiskmanager -k <path to vmdk>