Using veeam B&R to shrink a virtual disk

[marius roma]

A Windows Server 2016 VM was configured with a single large thin virtual disk (vmdk) of 500 GB
The Windows partition inside the virtual disk was resized to 100 GB and now the virtual disk contains the Windows partition and 400 GB of unused space.
However, the space used by the virtual disk in the VMware datastore remains 500 GB and I don't see any option in VMware ESXi or VMware vShpere 5.5 to reduce it.
Can I use Veeam B&R to backup the VM and restore it reducing the space used by the virtual disk in the VMware datastore to 100 GB?
As the VM is quite critical, can I ensure that the restored VM will be identical (same SID and same configuration) as the VM backed up and that I will be able to power it on and use it without problems?
Is there any additional issue I should consider?
Regards
marius

[DGrinev]

Hi Mario,

You cannot do that with the Veeam B&R functionality.
However, there is a workaround by VMware that can help you to achieve what you're after.
Please review this post for the instructions. Thanks!

[marius roma]

Many thanks
Marius

[omerlin98000]

Hi Marius (and DGrinev).
I'm in the same process (an Exchange data disk thin provisioned that has grown to 95% of its maximum 400GB size, due to orphan shadow copy problem).
Problem solved, but the shadow 150GB freed have to be reclaimed.

How do you manage that with DGrinev links?
Is vmkfstools punchzero your solution? Because I want to avoid a downtime and storage vMotion seems to be a better solution (providing I find the free space on another storage )

BTW, if the best solution is punchzero, is it possible to do a snapshot before or you can't?