Shrink disk disabled in ESXi4 after convert

[tmakowka]

Hi,

i'm currently experiencing the following problem:

I converted a Windows 2003 Server image from VMware Server 1.5 to our new ESXi4 box (using the VMware Converter standalone client) . After the convert and the install of the new VMwareTools i get the following error message when trying to shrink the disks:

"Shrink disk is disabled for this virtual machine. Shrinking is disabled for virtual disks not used in persistent mode and other factors. For more information see the documentation for your VMware product."

There are currently no snapshots defined. The configuration of the disks is as follows:

Controller: LSI Logic Parallel

Disk type: Thin, "independent" NOT checked

I see no reason why the shrink functionality is disabled in this scenario. This VM is also no linked clone, it's a hot-converted one.

Anybody have an idea what is going on here? I just upgraded to build 175625 today but this doesn't change a thing.

[casselc · Accepted solution]

The VMware Tools Shrink option doesn't work in ESX.

You can migrate the disk to a new datastore and choose the thin-provisioned format to reduce the size of the vmdk file on the datastore, or you can do a V2V and use smaller disks on the destination VM.

[tmakowka]

Ok, that explains why the option is not available. What do you mean exactly my migrating? With the Vmware Converter? Do i understand it correctly that the disk is implicitly shrinked when converting to a thin provisioned disk?

[ESXi4]

You wrote that vmware tools shrink option doesn't work in ESXi. Howerver, I did manage to run shrink command on thick-providioned disks. But I was not able to shrinkg thin-provisioned disks. Could you please help?

I have installed ESXi 4 with several guest “Widows Server 2008 32-bit”, “Windows 7 32-bit and 64 bit”, “Windows NT 4.0” and VMWare tools under each guest.

When the guest is installed in the “thick-provisioned” disk, the shrink option is enabled in VMWare Tools, but shrinking does not actually decrease the used space (this is quite expectable for thick disks, but why then the shrink option is enabled?). For thin-provisioned disks, the shrink option is disabled with a message “shrinking is disabled for virtual disks not used in persistent mode and other factors, see documentation for your VMWare product”. However, documentation didn't give an explanation.

Under “Windows NT 4.0” and “Windows 7 64-bit”, shrink was always disables, whether the provisioning was thin or thick.

Since shrink was disabled for thin-provisioned disk under Windows 7 32-bit, I have found an advice to run “sdelete.exe -c” but rather than freeing the space it grew the used space almost to provisioned space.

Does anybody have shrink enabled for thin-provisioned disk, and what guest Windows are you using?

In the meanwhile, I have found only one way to free space on a thin-provisioned disk: use the build-in Windows backup tool to backup the entire system to a network, delete a virtual machne, create a new one and restore the backup, but it is clumsy.

[uma_kits]

I was facing same issue with you all. I thought about thin provisioning feature on vmware vsphere will be dynamic size when disks are not used. But the fact need a manual operation to do this task. I think almost of us have never known this issue before.

You can find the right solution from this website.

VMware ESX 4 Reclaiming Thin Provisioned disk Unused Space

http://www.virtualizationteam.com/virtualization-vmware/vsphere-virtualization-vmware/vmware-esx-4-r...

The summary of the solution is to use sdelete & Storage Vmotion on the virtual machine to free up that unused space.