You must download the VMDK before you can mount or boot it. There is no “lazy fetching” of blocks.
You can analyze or run the VM entirely offline, which is critical for malware analysis or legacy system testing. download vmdk
: You can use the vifs command to copy files from a remote datastore to your local disk. Critical Safety Tips Cannot Download .vmdk files from VM | VMware vSphere You must download the VMDK before you can mount or boot it