> Windows Server 2008 Enterprise SP2 with Hyper-V hosting (4) VM's
> Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 as 'VM'
>
> The Hyper-V host has an 800 Gb data drive with 200 Gb free, and a 136 Gb
> OS
> drive with 6 (yes, six) Gb free, with 80 Gb taken up by some kind of rogue
> snapshot that is growing daily.
>
> Here's the VM containers on my Hyper-V host data drive:
>
> Directory of D:\
> 01/18/2009 11:32 PM 8,477,612,032 VM c drive.vhd
> 01/18/2009 11:32 PM 8,396,341,248 VM d drive.vhd
>
> Here's the amount of data from inside the VM:
>
> C:\>dir /s
> 35334 File(s) 6,668,985,059 bytes
> 11517 Dir(s) 116,104,929,280 bytes free
> D:\>dir /s
> 29369 File(s) 3,489,338,879 bytes
> 507 Dir(s) 200,844,767,232 bytes free
>
> Here's the .avhd files on the Hyper-V host's OS drive:
>
> Directory of C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Snapshots\24B...
> 07/07/2009 07:43 AM 31,166,291,456 VM c drive_6886C3BA-6F77-... .avhd
> 07/07/2009 07:00 AM 48,952,361,472 VM d drive_0B495A1B-8B4B-... .avhd
>
> The VM has (2) 8 Gb drives - 6.7 Gb on C:, and 3.5 Gb on D:.
>
> The Hyper-V host has (2) 8 Gb containers; the VM has 120 and 200 Gb
> drives;
> Hyper-V has taken 80 Gb of snapshots on a total of 10 Gb of data.
>
> I have not taken any snapshots. Why has the system taken upon itself to
> create snapshots of drives that have less data than the original
> containers?
> How did this happen? How do I fix it?
>
> I cannot expand either drive, because they both have snapshots pending. I
> cannot delete the .avhd files, because I'd lose all the data. I've already
> ran out of space once, putting all the VM's in 'Paused - Critical'. That's
> how I found the .avhd files.
>
> I am going to permanently run out of space on the host OS drive unless I
> can
> fix this in a hurry. Help!
> --
> Rob Pettrey
> Microsoft Small Business Specialist

> You as well?
>
> I had exactly the same problem and it took me 30 hours to fix it. The moral
> of the story is: SNAPSHOTS ARE BAD!!! NEVER NEVER NEVER use snapshots in
> production!
>
> And oh, just an FYI, you will be pulling an all nighter to fix this one and
> have a bunch of down time. My snapshots were over 700Gigs.... :-(
> Here is what I got when I phoned MS:
>
> Snapshots were NOT to be used in production.
> There are tonnes of problems with them such as if you want to expand a VHD
> (it will corrupt it),
> if you want to do a backup (it will corrupt it) and
> if you want to copy off a .VHD (it will corrupt it). Snapshots are BAD!
> They are only to be used in development.
>
> <sigh>
>
> Okay, Here is what you do to fix it.
>
> You need to delete your snapshots. You can go to the Hyper-V MMC console
> and do this. Open up a VM and delete the snapshots. Then you will have to
> restart the VM.
>
> BUT
>
> You need double the diskspace for the merge to work. After the restart, it
> will start mergings. Essentially, it is building another complete VHD file,
> after it is done, it will deltete the snapshots. It may take a couple hours
> do do this. Mine took around 14 hours.
>
> If you don't have enough diskspace, you will have to make diskspace. That
> may involve moving a VM or other data to another hardrive. It was a lot of
> fun when I moved a 400GB VM to an external USB drive. If you are on a
> network, you can always do a net use * \\servername\driveshare to map a
> drive and copy the data. I would recommend robocopy, at least you get to
> see the percentage copied.
>
>
>
>
>
> "Rob Pettrey" <(email address - cut out)> wrote in message
> news:(email address - cut out)...
> > Windows Server 2008 Enterprise SP2 with Hyper-V hosting (4) VM's
> > Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 as 'VM'
> >
> > The Hyper-V host has an 800 Gb data drive with 200 Gb free, and a 136 Gb
> > OS
> > drive with 6 (yes, six) Gb free, with 80 Gb taken up by some kind of rogue
> > snapshot that is growing daily.
> >
> > Here's the VM containers on my Hyper-V host data drive:
> >
> > Directory of D:\
> > 01/18/2009 11:32 PM 8,477,612,032 VM c drive.vhd
> > 01/18/2009 11:32 PM 8,396,341,248 VM d drive.vhd
> >
> > Here's the amount of data from inside the VM:
> >
> > C:\>dir /s
> > 35334 File(s) 6,668,985,059 bytes
> > 11517 Dir(s) 116,104,929,280 bytes free
> > D:\>dir /s
> > 29369 File(s) 3,489,338,879 bytes
> > 507 Dir(s) 200,844,767,232 bytes free
> >
> > Here's the .avhd files on the Hyper-V host's OS drive:
> >
> > Directory of C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Snapshots\24B...
> > 07/07/2009 07:43 AM 31,166,291,456 VM c drive_6886C3BA-6F77-... .avhd
> > 07/07/2009 07:00 AM 48,952,361,472 VM d drive_0B495A1B-8B4B-... .avhd
> >
> > The VM has (2) 8 Gb drives - 6.7 Gb on C:, and 3.5 Gb on D:.
> >
> > The Hyper-V host has (2) 8 Gb containers; the VM has 120 and 200 Gb
> > drives;
> > Hyper-V has taken 80 Gb of snapshots on a total of 10 Gb of data.
> >
> > I have not taken any snapshots. Why has the system taken upon itself to
> > create snapshots of drives that have less data than the original
> > containers?
> > How did this happen? How do I fix it?
> >
> > I cannot expand either drive, because they both have snapshots pending. I
> > cannot delete the .avhd files, because I'd lose all the data. I've already
> > ran out of space once, putting all the VM's in 'Paused - Critical'. That's
> > how I found the .avhd files.
> >
> > I am going to permanently run out of space on the host OS drive unless I
> > can
> > fix this in a hurry. Help!
> > --
> > Rob Pettrey
> > Microsoft Small Business Specialist
>
>

> Aaron,
>
> Thanks for your quick response, but there is one problem:
>
> I don't have any Hyper-V snapshots!
>
> This VM is in some kind of weird limbo.
>
> Somehow the system has taken a snapshot for me - well, at least it's an
> .avhd file, which would indicate it's a snapshot. BUT I DIDN'T TAKE THE
> SNAPSHOT! This VM is in some kind of weird mode where the system apparently
> thought it needed a snapshot and took one, but it doesn't show up in the
> Hyper-V console, and thinks it has all kinds of disk space allocated where it
> doesn't.
>
> If I go to the Hyper-V console and click on the VM, it tells me there are no
> shapshots. In fact, none of my VM's have any snapshots. BUT...if I shut down
> the VM, go to the VM settings, and click on either disk, everything is greyed
> out except Inspect, and it tells me "Edit is not available because snapshots
> exist for this virtual machine".
>
> Somehow there's a connection between the VM drives and these snapshot files,
> but I don't know how to reset this connection.
>
> I'm looking at options.
>
> I'll try first your suggestion of deleting the snapshots, and restarting the
> VM and waiting to see if the merging process starts, but I'm not hopeful
> because of the weird situation this VM is in.
>
> Another option would be to use NT backup to back up the VM OS and data
> drives to another location, blow away and re-create the VM, install 2003
> Server on the VM, and then restore the data to each drive from inside the VM
> using NT backup.
>
> Or maybe I could keep the VM intact and restore a disk at a time; back up
> only the data drive from inside the VM using NT backup, delete and re-create
> the D: drive .vhd only, and restore with NT backup. Then do the same for the
> C: drive.
>
> Maybe I should just do a complete NT backup from inside, do a complete .vhd
> backup from outside, shut down the VM, then blow away the .avhd files and see
> what happens.
>
> I have shut down the VM, thinking that it would start merging, but that
> didn't work. And although I can't resize the disk, I can backup the VM's, I
> haven't tried to copy a .vhd yet, or restore either the VM or just the .vhd's
> to another location.
>
> I am open to any and every idea and option.
> --
> Rob Pettrey
> Microsoft Small Business Specialist
>
>
> "Aaron Tech" wrote:
>
> > You as well?
> >
> > I had exactly the same problem and it took me 30 hours to fix it. The moral
> > of the story is: SNAPSHOTS ARE BAD!!! NEVER NEVER NEVER use snapshots in
> > production!
> >
> > And oh, just an FYI, you will be pulling an all nighter to fix this one and
> > have a bunch of down time. My snapshots were over 700Gigs.... :-(
> > Here is what I got when I phoned MS:
> >
> > Snapshots were NOT to be used in production.
> > There are tonnes of problems with them such as if you want to expand a VHD
> > (it will corrupt it),
> > if you want to do a backup (it will corrupt it) and
> > if you want to copy off a .VHD (it will corrupt it). Snapshots are BAD!
> > They are only to be used in development.
> >
> > <sigh>
> >
> > Okay, Here is what you do to fix it.
> >
> > You need to delete your snapshots. You can go to the Hyper-V MMC console
> > and do this. Open up a VM and delete the snapshots. Then you will have to
> > restart the VM.
> >
> > BUT
> >
> > You need double the diskspace for the merge to work. After the restart, it
> > will start mergings. Essentially, it is building another complete VHD file,
> > after it is done, it will deltete the snapshots. It may take a couple hours
> > do do this. Mine took around 14 hours.
> >
> > If you don't have enough diskspace, you will have to make diskspace. That
> > may involve moving a VM or other data to another hardrive. It was a lot of
> > fun when I moved a 400GB VM to an external USB drive. If you are on a
> > network, you can always do a net use * \\servername\driveshare to map a
> > drive and copy the data. I would recommend robocopy, at least you get to
> > see the percentage copied.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > "Rob Pettrey" <(email address - cut out)> wrote in message
> > news:(email address - cut out)...
> > > Windows Server 2008 Enterprise SP2 with Hyper-V hosting (4) VM's
> > > Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 as 'VM'
> > >
> > > The Hyper-V host has an 800 Gb data drive with 200 Gb free, and a 136 Gb
> > > OS
> > > drive with 6 (yes, six) Gb free, with 80 Gb taken up by some kind of rogue
> > > snapshot that is growing daily.
> > >
> > > Here's the VM containers on my Hyper-V host data drive:
> > >
> > > Directory of D:\
> > > 01/18/2009 11:32 PM 8,477,612,032 VM c drive.vhd
> > > 01/18/2009 11:32 PM 8,396,341,248 VM d drive.vhd
> > >
> > > Here's the amount of data from inside the VM:
> > >
> > > C:\>dir /s
> > > 35334 File(s) 6,668,985,059 bytes
> > > 11517 Dir(s) 116,104,929,280 bytes free
> > > D:\>dir /s
> > > 29369 File(s) 3,489,338,879 bytes
> > > 507 Dir(s) 200,844,767,232 bytes free
> > >
> > > Here's the .avhd files on the Hyper-V host's OS drive:
> > >
> > > Directory of C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Snapshots\24B...
> > > 07/07/2009 07:43 AM 31,166,291,456 VM c drive_6886C3BA-6F77-... .avhd
> > > 07/07/2009 07:00 AM 48,952,361,472 VM d drive_0B495A1B-8B4B-... .avhd
> > >
> > > The VM has (2) 8 Gb drives - 6.7 Gb on C:, and 3.5 Gb on D:.
> > >
> > > The Hyper-V host has (2) 8 Gb containers; the VM has 120 and 200 Gb
> > > drives;
> > > Hyper-V has taken 80 Gb of snapshots on a total of 10 Gb of data.
> > >
> > > I have not taken any snapshots. Why has the system taken upon itself to
> > > create snapshots of drives that have less data than the original
> > > containers?
> > > How did this happen? How do I fix it?
> > >
> > > I cannot expand either drive, because they both have snapshots pending. I
> > > cannot delete the .avhd files, because I'd lose all the data. I've already
> > > ran out of space once, putting all the VM's in 'Paused - Critical'. That's
> > > how I found the .avhd files.
> > >
> > > I am going to permanently run out of space on the host OS drive unless I
> > > can
> > > fix this in a hurry. Help!
> > > --
> > > Rob Pettrey
> > > Microsoft Small Business Specialist
> >
> >