David Zacharczyk
asked on
Shrink OS partition on Hyper-V Server 2016 Core Installation
Hello,
I have a PowerEdge 730 with H730 RAID controller. I created a RAID 5 array with 2 x hot spares. The total available disk space is about 4.4TB.
I created a single VD using all the available space.
I installed Windows Hyper-V Server 2016 core. During the install I did not manually create partitions since I intended on having only a single partition of all the available space to allocate to VMs so I just selected the raw disk space, which displayed as 4.4TB. This was the first mistake since now the entire partition is MBR. That being said, it only sees 2TB max.
Now I need to shrink the OS partition to about 500GB so I can create 2nd GPT partition so I can make use of the remaining space.
My second mistake is what complicates the situation a little more. I installed and deployed 3 production VMs assuming I had all the disk space to work with.
I have made a backup of the VMS using Veeam backup and replciation and I moved the production VMs to external storage for the time being so I can adjust the C:\ partition.
Now, my question is... Can I use diskpart to shrink the C:\ partition and then create a second partition with the remaining space on a single VD or do I have to shrink the VD in the RAID utility and create another VD.
Is what I'm trying to accomplish possible without destroying the OS?
I know there is always a risk, which is why I have backups, but I would like to do it with the least amount of down time. I've already had the VMs off line for about 16 hours while I move them to removable media, but I wondering which is the best route from the point forward.
Thanks in advance!
I have a PowerEdge 730 with H730 RAID controller. I created a RAID 5 array with 2 x hot spares. The total available disk space is about 4.4TB.
I created a single VD using all the available space.
I installed Windows Hyper-V Server 2016 core. During the install I did not manually create partitions since I intended on having only a single partition of all the available space to allocate to VMs so I just selected the raw disk space, which displayed as 4.4TB. This was the first mistake since now the entire partition is MBR. That being said, it only sees 2TB max.
Now I need to shrink the OS partition to about 500GB so I can create 2nd GPT partition so I can make use of the remaining space.
My second mistake is what complicates the situation a little more. I installed and deployed 3 production VMs assuming I had all the disk space to work with.
I have made a backup of the VMS using Veeam backup and replciation and I moved the production VMs to external storage for the time being so I can adjust the C:\ partition.
Now, my question is... Can I use diskpart to shrink the C:\ partition and then create a second partition with the remaining space on a single VD or do I have to shrink the VD in the RAID utility and create another VD.
Is what I'm trying to accomplish possible without destroying the OS?
I know there is always a risk, which is why I have backups, but I would like to do it with the least amount of down time. I've already had the VMs off line for about 16 hours while I move them to removable media, but I wondering which is the best route from the point forward.
Thanks in advance!
Shrinking is not without its troubles. You need to be sure the areas are not used at all, then the filesystem needs to be shrunk (depends on support in a filesystem, this is mostly not available).
At least you can shrink it to 2TB because more cannot be used. the best way is to do that, then create a smaller disk and copy your disk to the smaller one. after that you can delete the original and allocate storage from there.
Best is to have system disks that are enough for the job (expansion is less of a problem if really needed)
Then do the same for data disks, but do allow for enough space for scratch files and growth, a full disk will slow down a system to a crawl.
And as always make a backup before you start.
At least you can shrink it to 2TB because more cannot be used. the best way is to do that, then create a smaller disk and copy your disk to the smaller one. after that you can delete the original and allocate storage from there.
Best is to have system disks that are enough for the job (expansion is less of a problem if really needed)
Then do the same for data disks, but do allow for enough space for scratch files and growth, a full disk will slow down a system to a crawl.
And as always make a backup before you start.
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Hi David Zacharczyk,
You can try remote management. Connect to the remote computer option.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771393(v=ws.11).aspx
https://www.petri.com/remote-management-in-windows-server-2008-r2
Thanks
MAS
You can try remote management. Connect to the remote computer option.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771393(v=ws.11).aspx
https://www.petri.com/remote-management-in-windows-server-2008-r2
Thanks
MAS
ASKER
Was not able to use other solutions.
Yes use diskpart to shrink the partition, then shrink the virtual disk,
Always create separate virtual disks instead of using partitions