Windows 2008 R2 VM System Drive Increased Substantially after moving VM from ESXi 5.1 host to ESXi 5.5 host using vCenter Converter Standalone

[ITTropolis]

Hi:

I moved a Windows 2008 R2 VM from an ESXi 5.1 host to an ESXi 5.5 host using vCenter Converter Standalone.  The C: / System Drive increased in size substantially to where I now need to extend the volume.  Is this expected/normal behavior?  Perhaps the conversion/move created temp files that I can delete?

Thanks very much for any insights.

[Praveenmna · Accepted solution]

This is not expected behavior.

Drive size is set during the conversion and that will not increase by its own during the conversion.

Now you need to do V2V if you want to shrink the volume.

[ITTropolis]

Hi Praveenmna:

Maybe I stated the issue incorrectly.  The vmdk/disk did not increase in size.  The vmdk was 360GB before the conversion and 360GB after the conversion, with 60GB C: volume in Windows 2008 vm and 300GB 😧 volume.  The issue is that the consumed space of the C: volume increased by approx. 15GB, i.e. before conversion approx. 40GB of 60GB consumed, after conversion approx. 55GB of 60GB consumed.  And now, in order to extend C: volume, I must first move data and delete 😧 volume since it is adjacent to C:.

Thank you.

[Rubeck]

Maybe the space has been consumed by VSS snapshots?

/Rubeck

[ITTropolis]

Hi Rubeck:

VSS snapshots are not consuming the space.

Thanks,

Bob

[JPM300]

Did the VM get V2V'ed from a VMFS 4.x Datastore to a VMFS5.X Datastores.  VMFS has only 1 block size now which could account for some of the size increase.  Where VMFS 3.5/4.X had different block sizes?

Just a thought

[ITTropolis]

Hi JPM300:

It was moved from a VMFS 3.46 w/1 MB block size to a VMFS 5.60 w/1 MB block size.

Thank you.

[JPM300]

Hmmm, well if its the same block size it shouldn't shift to much if at all.  Did you ever get to the bottom of the missing space?

[ITTropolis]

Hi JPM300:

I just marked a Correct Answer to close this item out.  Haven't identified the cause but perhaps some other event that happened approx. the same time as running the converter/moving the vm to the new host caused the issue.

Thank you.

[Sateesh_vCloud]

Just curious about your conclusion:

Logically if you perform cold conversion of P2V there is no chance for other members to add/dump data to C:\ drive.

Are you confident about the size that you captured before P2V?  [OR] You compared with current Physical server C:\ drive space? (Assuming it is out of Network and you checked it via Remote Cards)

Also the free space that you calculated before installing the agent on the Server?

If you review the steps that you have executed ... there will be definite answer for extra disk space occupied at C:\ drive.

If you want to know which folder taking more space before and after conversion - make TreeSize report at both source and destination. This will give you better picture or answer.

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful

T. Sateesh