Datastore file management

Datastore file management is the simplest way to free up some space on our datastores. vSphere environments tend to be very dynamic in nature, with VMs being deployed and destroyed on multiple occasions. Often a VM will get created to perform a certain task or test and then abandoned. The VM will often be powered down and removed from inventory, leaving the files that make up that VM on the datastore.

Even though we have retired the application, powered down the VM, and removed it from inventory, the files that make up that VM still reside on the datastore and still consume space. And we aren't limited to just unregistered VMs in this case. A VMFS datastore can hold any type of file placed in it. Therefore, if we have placed ISO image files or other packages in our datastores, they will also contribute to the overall capacity usage.

So how do we find out what and where these files are? Unfortunately, there is no button that we can simply press to do this for us. There...