If you take snapshots of your VMs, there are chances that a snapshot will grow too big that it uses all the spaces on a datastore. The things with snapshots are that once a while you will need to merge and commit it back to the original VM vmdk file. There are two ways you can do this, one is by using the SnapShot Manager and the other is to telnet into the server and type the commands manually.

The best way to do this is by using the SnapShot Manager.

To Commit or Merge Snapshots:

– Right click on your VM and select “Snapshot”

– Choose “SnapShot Manager”

– Highlight the snapshot that you want to commit or merge

– Click on the ‘Delete’ or ‘Delete All’ option to commit the snapshot.

* Yes, VMWare should have added a “commit” button or something. The “Delete” button is a little counter intuitive.
– Once you have clicked on the “Delete” button, it will commits all the changes back into the original vmdk file. If there are free spaces inside the original vmdk file, then it will allocated into the vmdk file and the file will not grow.