"An error occurred during the conversion: 'Block level cloning does not support shrinking volumes'

[afoley196]

Hi,

I'm attempting to virtualize a SQL database server that has an direct attached array connected to it.  Some of the partitions are stored on this array.  It gets through all of them, but one.  Immediately when it starts to convert that drive, it fails with the error "An error occurred during the conversion: 'Block level cloning does not support shrinking volumes'.  I can't seem to find anything online about the error so I'm wondering if any of you have seen it?

I've set all of the drives to be Thin Provisioned and I leave it at the original size.  The only thing I have done outside of the default is to remove one of the drives from the conversion and set them to thin provision. 

Not sure what info I would need to proved here, so please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

T

[POCEH]

And the question is?

Check User's Manual about block level cloning and volume resizing.

[afoley196]

If you don't have anything helpful to add, why post?

I'm not trying to resize anything and that's the problem.  Obviously I'm having an issue here and was trying to see if anyone has run into it before and possible steps to resolve the issue.  Don't worry about it though.  I've opened a case with VMWare to see if someone can help.

Have a good day.

[POCEH]

Hmmm, I cant explain better that message, you can't shrink with block-level cloning, differences between cloning modes are explained in User's Manual.

It's no clear from the message that you don't request resize (shrink) but fall in this error, in this case the log bundle is useful - please upload it for investigation.

Regards

[Ninja82]

Did you ever get a solution to this? i am having the same problem.

[POCEH]

Ouch, you can't! Block-level cloning keeps files "position", which is not possible when you shrink the volume... Is it better explained now?

[Ninja82]

Yes but I am not shrinking the volume, i am just converting it to eliminate 2 volumes of many spanned disks. 2 of 3 volumes work as expected, but the 3rd gives me this error even though i am not shrinking it.

[POCEH]

This is strange - if the message is 'Block level cloning does not support shrinking volumes' then the change in volume size is detected... Could you upload log-bundle?

[Ninja82]

I attached the logs

[POCEH]

Unfortunately there is an error with LDM volumes placed on MBR disks, in short we try to create destination MBR disk but in this case it can't hold such big data (18TB -> 2TB). We should fix this in feature version.

You can convert only system and "E:" LDM volume with Converter. For "F:" LDM volume - you need to create new disk in VM and transfer data with Windows copy command.

If this can't work for you, then data could be transferred from F: to E: volume and then converted (even with single volume transfer with fake VM, and then move and attach new volume to the VM).

HTH

Other possible solution is to explicitly shrink volume and convert with file-level copy.

[Ninja82]

Thanks for the help POCEH. Why does E go successfully and not F? They are both spanned dynamic volumes in windows. F is actually a bit smaller than E too.

[POCEH]

luckily the F: starts with GPT disk - as result destination is GPT partition/volume which has no limitations for size.

[Ninja82]

Got it, Thanks for explaining.