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sylvie
Contributor
Contributor

How can I reduce the size of workstaiton?

I am running a VM wokstation 7.  I keep running out of space when I launch the workstation.  I am not capable to shrinking the workstation (one cause says too many communication channels open) I suspect my worksation is a clone.

Does anyone know how I can prevent the VM from growing any further?

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9 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Usually disk space issues occur due to active snapshots. Can you check whether the VM's folder contains files like "...-00000x.vmdk". If there are al lot of these files (snapshots) please post a list of files "dir *.* /one" (in case of Windows) or "ls -lisa" (in case of Linux) to see what can be done. In addition to this list, attach the latest vmware.log file as well as the VM's .vmx file to your next post.

How much free disk space do you currently have and do you have e.g. an external drive which with enough free disk space to copy/clone the VM's virtual disk?

André

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Rahulverma20111
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

You can try shrinking the virtual disks.

Note: Please do not consider my comments/suggestions as an official response from VMware.
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sylvie
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

All snapshots have been removed.  I have also removed everything from that drive but the workstation keeps growing.  I cannot shrink, defrag nor compact the VM.  I was down to a few mb.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Without some more details it's hard to say what's causing this. It would help if you'd post (attach) the VM's latest vmware.log.

André

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sylvie
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I had tried to shrink but I get the message "to many communication channels open..."

I was hoping that I could change one of the configuration file to stopthe VW from growing.

Thanks

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sylvie
Contributor
Contributor

Please find attached a copy vmware.log file

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Not sure what happened so far to this VM and it's virtual disk. However from the virtual disk's file name (Windows XP Professional-000002-cl1-000001-cl1-000002-cl2-000003.vmdk) it looks like this has been cloned from snapshots a couple of times. According to the log file the VM is currently running with two active snapshots (000003.vmdk and 000002.vmdk). Don't you see the snapshots in the Snapshot Manager?

Anyway please post the file list I asked for in my first response and let me know how much free disk space you currently have on the disk, to see whether the snapshots can be committed to the base disk or if a clone would be the easier solution.

André

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sylvie
Contributor
Contributor

the directory lists is attached.

I have been able to liberate more space reducing the size of the history, content and cookies of my internet explorer.  But I suspect that it's matter of time before I run out of space again.

BTW thank you for your time.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

This explains the "loss" of disk space. The virtual disk has a size of 100GB and the two snapshots together require the same amount of disk space too. Now the question is how to delete the snapshots!? How much free disk space do you have on your C: drive? Or do you have an external drive with enough free disk space (~110GB)?

If you do have eoough free disk space on another drive, I'd recommend you create a full clone to the VM and once you verified this clone works you may delete the current VM and copy the new VM back to the old location on the 😧 drive.

André

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