Creating a VMDK file indepedent of a Guest VM

So you've got your ESX or ESXi server set up with a bunch of guests. What if you wanted to share a drive between them independent of any particular guest os? You can use the command line tool vmkfstools to achieve this. Let's say you wanted to create a new virtual disk 3GB. Open up your command line and change to the directory you want your new virtual drive located in. Use the command:

vmkfstools -c 3000M ./file.vmdk

That's it. Now you can mount this as a drive on any of your VM guests. This is a good idea if you have a bunch of tools or installs you use on a variety of systems. Unfortunately, you cannot share the vmdk file on multiple guest vm's at the same time.

Resources:
http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1348873,00.html
http://www.esxguide.com/esx/content/view/18/25/