Files created with vsphere on a seperate ZFS dataset are not visable from cli within FreeBSD itself

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> Or is it that the files are in ESXishare but masked by the machine1 
> mount.

Yes, that is exactly the issue.

On the server:

Writing to /storage/ESXishare/ will place files on the 
storage/ESXishare filesystem
Writing to /storage/ESXishare/machine1/ will place files on the 
storage/ESXishare/machine1 filesystem (which is mounted over the top of 
a machine1 dir on the parent fs)

On ESXi:

Writing to ESXishare will write to the mounted filesystem 
(storage/ESXishare)
Writing to ESXishare/machine1 will write to the machine1 subdirectory 
on this filesystem

NFS mounts will not cross filesystem mount points.

It would be nice to be able to do what you are trying to - it would 
also allow the ability to use zfs clones to duplicate VMs. 
Unfortunately, you would need to export and  mount each machine's ZFS 
filesystem separately in ESXi.

> One more thing.
> I use thin provisioning.
> But if i use cp to copy files they grow to the actual size.
> How do i overcome that?

As far as I'm aware FreeBSD cp still doesn't have a sparse option. The 
way I do it is to use rsync with the --sparse option. There may be an 
easiest way but I like rsync and use it for various other tasks so 
generally have it installed anyway.

--Matt