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KANFAAS
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-15-2013 04:40 AM

Reduce size of VM

Hi!

I've got two server installations in my vSphere 5.1 enviroment that are 2 TB in size, and I have the well known (ridiculous) issues with taking snapshots. This in turn leads to backup issues, as I'm using Veeam to backup the entire VM (after taking snapshots). I need to reduce the sizes of these two file servers (running Windows Server 2012) to fix the issue, but I'm not finding any good ways of doing this.

  • Tried VMware converter to copy with resize on a different host, but it fails to read information from the VM.
  • Tried Workstation 9 to copy to a local PC for resizing, but it for some reason fails to copy.
  • It's a while back since I tried this, so I can't recall the exact error messages...

How can I achieve this without reinstalling my VM's?

- Ivar

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4 Replies
JimKnopf99
Commander
Commander
‎04-15-2013 05:08 AM

Hi,

did you try to start the converter as a "Administrator"? Right Click and  run as administrator?

But server 2012 is not official supported until now.

Check release notes.

https://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/conv_sa_501_rel_notes.html

Other oportunity if possible, add a second hard disk in the size of your belongings and copy the files to the new disk.

After that, you could delete the old disk.

Frank

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KANFAAS
Contributor
Contributor
‎04-15-2013 05:23 AM

I'm pretty sure I tried running it elevated as well, but I'll keep it in mind.

And I didn't think the OS really mattered when I'm convirting an existing VM that is powered off? I pictured it would only copy the raw VM data...

About adding another hard disk: The server is part of a domain. The OS is installed on a virtual hard drive mapped as C:. On the same drive I have a folder containing several network shares I'd rather not have to set up again, including a set of roaming profiles / redirected folders with per-user permissions that causes bit of a headache (not to mention that some 60 users have offline files pointing to this area on the server). I can't figure out how to "swap" the drive without messing up shares and permissions?

- Ivar

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Cyberfed27
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
‎04-30-2013 11:42 AM

This is 100% a UAC problem. I have seen this before, even when logged in as my account which was a domain admin account.

Do the following:

1. Disable all of UAC (temporarily) (requires reboot)

2. log in as LOCAL admin, not a domain account but the local admin account on the server itself.

Right click on VmwareConverter and 'run as administrator'

I will be you will then see all your HDs listed Smiley Happy

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KANFAAS
Contributor
Contributor
‎05-01-2013 10:45 PM

This is definitely not a UAC issue. The first thing I do when setting up a computer is to permanently disable UAC. It's the silliest invention in mankind.

But to give an update on the issue, I got around it by:

  1. Defragmenting/consolidating free space on the Windows drive
  2. Reducing the disk size in Windows
  3. Connecting a QNAP NAS to vSphere and then copy the VM to the other datastore (just in case)
  4. Creating an additional disk in the VM
  5. Cloning the disk with Ghost, reducing the disk in the process
  6. Deleting the original disk
  7. Copying the VM back to my main server

Took me a weekend, but it's all good now!

- Ivar

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