AegisIT1
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Hyper-V/Exchange Store Question
We are running Exchange 2007 on a Hyper-V instance and noticed with some alarm that the VHD on which the Exchange information stores are located is running low on disk space. We need to expand the drive to at least 1TB (we have enough room on our cluster) and I was wondering if anyone out there knew of any issues when expanding a VHD which has Exchange stores on it and what the easiest way to do this was. I am relatively new to Hyper-V so any guidance will be most appreciated.
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you create a new storage group on additional drive. (as drive or mount point)
moving the database to a new location means that everyone who's mailbox is on the database will be down while from the time that the mailbox database is unmounted till the time it is remounted after copying in the new location.
creating a new database in the new location and moving the mailboxes to the new database means that each mailbox will experience downtime when it is moved, however this will be significantly less time than above.
creating a new database in the new location and moving the mailboxes to the new database means that each mailbox will experience downtime when it is moved, however this will be significantly less time than above.
As the instructions linked above state, you have to shut down the VM, or at least detach the VHD from the VM, in which case you ate best off by shutting down the VM.
My Exchange server uses raw iSCSI volumes mounted directly on the VM. An advantage is that I can grow the volume without interrupting the VM. The downside is that you loose all of the other advantages of using VHD.
My Exchange server uses raw iSCSI volumes mounted directly on the VM. An advantage is that I can grow the volume without interrupting the VM. The downside is that you loose all of the other advantages of using VHD.
@kevin -
I presume that you have thin provisioned iSCSI volumes to allow you to grow without interruption, or are you adding a new volume and expanding a dynamic disk over it ?
I presume that you have thin provisioned iSCSI volumes to allow you to grow without interruption, or are you adding a new volume and expanding a dynamic disk over it ?
I use raw iSCSI volume that I connect using iSCSI initiator inside the guest. My EqualLogic SAN allows online growth of LUNs, and then Windows 2003 and higher allow you to extend the last partition info free space on a BASIC disk. I stay away from dynamic disks.
ASKER
I know how to create the new VHD but how would I move the database over to the new drive? I have 3 storage groups, so would it just be a matter of changing the settings in Exchange to point them at the new drive?