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baleman2
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Hyper-V Increasing Hard Drive Space

I have Windows 2008 Server R2 running on a Dell Box.  A Raid 5 Array is setup for hard drive utilization and the available Hard Drive Space on the C: Drive of the Dell Box is 272 Gig.

I used Hyper-V to setup 6 Virtual Machines on this box.  Each was configured with 1024 gig of Ram memory and the default 127 gig Hard drive size.  

Today, I received calls that the end users could no longer login to any of the VM's.  

When I logged in remotely to the Dell Box and then into Hyper-V Manager, I could see that all the VM's were "Paused".  I was able to click on "Resume" and login to each of the VM's (one at a time) to see that only 30 gig of the default 127 gig hard drive size was being used.  I looked at this to see if low disk space on the VM could have caused the VM to go into the "Paused" state.   None of the VM's are remotely close to utilizing the default 127 gig assigned when the VM was created.

However, when I look at the C: Drive of the Dell box itself, only 180 mb of 272 gig of physical hard drive space is available.  I'm assuming that this is insufficient free space to allow the VM's to continue to allow access.  I'm new to Hyper-V, so I'm guessing here.

I don't think there's a way to "shrink" the assigned 127 gig of hard drive size on the VM's.

Would adding larger hard drives to the Raid 5 Array on the Dell box resolve the issue.  If there are other possible solutions, please advise.
VirtualizationExchangeMicrosoft Virtual ServerHyper-VDell

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Norm Dickinson

8/22/2022 - Mon
Norm Dickinson

It would be best to store the VMs on a non-system volume if possible. The C drive of a server is not a recommended location for such files, nor other transactional types such as SQL or Exchange databases, etc. It should be set up on a different volume, which will solve the problem.
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Svet Paperov

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baleman2

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Both of you make good points describing the errors I made in configuration of the VM's.  Now I'm stuck attempting to find a resolution so end users can begin to login to the VM's again.

For "tqfdotus":  With so little space left over on the physical box, how can I move these VM's to a non-system volume?

Tor "Svet":  Once I see the shadow copies, so what?  Can these be deleted to provide more space?
Svet Paperov

vssadmin delete shadows http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788026.aspx

You don't need to move the VM, just the VHD files:
1. Shut down the VM
2. Move the VHD file to the new volume
3. Attach the VHD back to the VM

Hyper-V Manager UI http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770494.aspx
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