Expand Virtual disk (VMDK) in VMware

How to Grow a virtual disk in a VMWare virtual machine

A VMDK file can be grown while no virtual machine is using it. Growing the VMDK only makes the virtual harddrive bigger - filesystem within the VMDK must still to be grown with other methods. 
On ESX Server:
          vmkfstools -X Gb  filename.vmdk
On ESX 3.5, you can also edit the VM settings and edit the harddrive when the VM is not running.

Note:  On ESX the filename.vmdk file is just a  file containing metainformation and "filename-flat.vmdk" is the actual data file. 
However, vmkfstools operations are used on the metafile



On VMware Server Workstation and VMware Fusion:
           vmware-vdiskmanager -x Gb filename.vmdk

For Example:

    If growing an existing vmdk file named "server1.vmdk" and it is to be grown so it's new size is 20GB, the command would be:
On ESX Server:

          vmkfstools -X 20GB server1.vmdk