One Guest Machine the vmdk File is about 25 GB. The used space is 10 GB. The free space is 15 GB. But now if we backup it with ESX Ranger the *.tvzc File is 20 GB big. How can it be so big ?? There are only 10 Gig`s data…
This has to do with how vmdks re-wipe out the white space (zero out) as data is added/removed fro the vmdk. In earlier versions of ESX VI3 there was no ability to shrink the vmdk so the space was zero'd out. In cases like this you would have to use a third party tool like Sysinternals-Sdelete.
With VI 3.5 and new updated vmware tools they re-introduced the ability to shrink the volumes and re-zero out the white space on the vmdk. You can see this by accessing vmware tools on the vm and navigate to the shrink tab.
