Question

VHD Files too big

Asked by: Bwalters613

Maximum hard drive space set to 16GB, and current space it 52.5GB.  Why is my very simple (Active Directory Domain Controller) VM taking up so much space and how can I shrink it?  I don't want to start all over, but it is eating up all the space in the drive it is on...

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Asked On
2008-01-24 at 07:56:28ID23107997
Tags

Microsoft

,

Virtual Server 2005

,

R2 SP1

,

VHD files

Topic

Microsoft Virtual Server

Participating Experts
2
Points
125
Comments
13

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Answers

 

by: derobyPosted on 2008-01-24 at 13:38:24ID: 20737703

Probably there is a logfile being written to (very often) ?
Then again, how big is the partition of your AD/DC ? Potentially it will grow the related .vhd to that exact same size and then something will cause a "disk full" error IMHO.

Try using FileMon from sysinternals (now MS) to find out which process on the server is doing a lot of disk activity.

is it a .vhd file that's growing so fast, or a .vud file ?

 

by: Bwalters613Posted on 2008-01-24 at 13:50:37ID: 20737866

The actualy .vhd file is growing to 55GB.  I thought the 16GB maximum set in the  program would keep it from growing beyond that, but I guess that is only for hte guest OS.  The Guest OS shows 16GB, with over 8GB free, so I *really* don't get the additional 30GB for the .vhd file.

 

by: brent_caskeyPosted on 2008-01-24 at 15:11:46ID: 20738547

Backup programs and antivirus programs are the usual culprits for causing this.

Are you using a Virus scanner on your host OS to monitor the folder where the VHD files are? If so, you will want to set the folder where the VHD folders are in the exclusion list of your AV scanner.

 

by: Bwalters613Posted on 2008-01-24 at 15:33:12ID: 20738717

An AV program makes the .vhd file grow out of control?  Excluding it is no big deal, but that sounds kind of crazy as a cause.  Not to mention other Virtual Server implementations I have that don't have this particular issue, using the same AV products.  I have to be able to shrink this one first, or I will have to start all over again or something...55GB is way too large.

 

by: derobyPosted on 2008-01-25 at 02:56:36ID: 20741489

Hmm, so if I understand this correctly, the guest machine only sees 16Gb, but the .vhd file on the host is 55Gb ? THAT is very strange indeed... might be a bug or something...
(the AV explanation scares me a bit too =P )

In each case, it doesn't make sense to me, maybe it's a good idea to do a backup asap =)eg.  Maybe the .vhd is corrupted somehow ...

Out of curiosity : this might be worth a test, although I do not not know how feasible it is to take the AD/DC off-line for a while

* create a new VM and have it boot something like Ghost / DiskImage / ...  or whatever os you like that has a program that can copy partitions from disk to disk
* Add a new 'empty' .vhd to this VM
* Take the AD/DC off-line by stopping said VM
* Add the 'troublesome' .vhd to the new VM
* Start the VM and let Ghost / DiskImage / ... copy the 16Gb partition from the troublesome drive to the empty drive, shouldn't take all too long
* close the VM
* rename the troublesome .vhd to *.troubles.bak
* rename the freshly created .vhd to whatever the troublesome .vhd was named
* restart the AD/DC machine... (should boot-up as if nothing really happened).
* monitor to see if the problem resurfaces...

ps : having the different .vhd's on different drives tends to speed things up, but it requires some fiddling in the .vmc files (that is using VPC, never fiddled with VS like that..yet =)

 

by: Bwalters613Posted on 2008-01-25 at 06:58:03ID: 20742977

Let me see if I can wade through this and do as you suggest. I will post back in a couple of days, most likely, as I won't be able to do this immediately.  Thanks, I hope!

 

by: derobyPosted on 2008-01-25 at 07:24:46ID: 20743194

I admit that it's quite a bit of work, but imVho there is something wrong with the .vhd.

As the guest doesn't seem to be aware, this seems like the safest way to 'rescue' the guest-data and "renew" the host file.

That said : this guy seems to have "similar" problems, you don't happen to have created a differential disk yourselves, have you ?

http://www.aspdeveloper.net/Virtual_Server_2005/rn1-738-9701_vhd_growing_out_of_control.aspx

 

by: derobyPosted on 2008-01-25 at 07:31:24ID: 20743239

Bit late to aks : but did you try compacting the disk ?

Apparently dynamic disks  do not shrink back perfectly (=> probably when lots of modifications are made to the same location), compacting seems to solve this ...
See also this link and read between the lines =)

http://www.aspdeveloper.net/Virtual_Server_2005/rn-738-292_Script_for_automating_vhd_compaction.aspx

 

by: Bwalters613Posted on 2008-01-25 at 07:49:00ID: 20743418

I am actually in the process now of moving that VHD file to a disk with more space so I can attempt this.  The existing disk doesn't have enough space to defrag or compact since this thing grew so much. I am hoping the compact will reign it in.

 

by: Bwalters613Posted on 2008-01-25 at 08:57:19ID: 20744133

Simply compacting it brought it back down to a little over 7GB.  For that, I am grateful!  I will watch it over the next week or two and see if it starts that out of control growth again.  I will also check those other threads for scripting of the compact.  Thank you!

 

by: Bwalters613Posted on 2008-01-25 at 08:58:06ID: 31424598

Thank you for all the options!  I will use them if this starts to act silly again.

 

by: derobyPosted on 2008-01-25 at 09:35:41ID: 20744467

Well, we all learned something today then =)

Wonder if it simply is due to lots of (small ?) disk-writes or something. Never seen that before though...

 

by: brent_caskeyPosted on 2008-01-25 at 11:30:26ID: 20745557

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Backup_Restore/Backup_Exec/Q_22428400.html

Backup Exec and Antivirus might be at fault though....

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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