One example method includes chunking a respective disk of each of a plurality of virtual machines (VM) to create a respective plurality of chunks associated with each of the VMs, creating, based on the chunking process, a cluster comprising one or more of the VMs, creating a VM template whose data and disk structure match respective data and disk structures of each of the VMs in the cluster, and in response to a file operation involving a first one of the VM disks, defragmenting the first VM disk so that a disk structure of the first VM disk is the same as a disk structure of the VM template.