Hyper-v VHDX and AVHDX total size exceeds maximum provisioned size

gricel107 1 Reputation point
2022-11-28T21:41:06.797+00:00

Hey all. I'm hoping someone can educate me a bit. I've inherited a Hyper-V cluster and have a VM with a hard drive that is provisioned at 2.78TB. When I look at the hard drive files, I see a VHDX file at 1.02TB and an associated AVHDX file at 1.86TB. I'd like to merge the two, but it appears that the total space for the VHDX and AVHDX exceed 2.78TB.

The VM itself reports 336GB of free space of 2.78TB. My thought is that it will likely merge fine, but it gives me some pause that the total file size for the VHDX and AVHDX exceed the provisioned amount. Is this because the AVHDX is tracking all the changes since checkpoint was created? When they are merged, the file should trim back down to it's current "real" size?

Hopefully that is clear. Please let me know if it needs some clarification.

Hyper-V
Hyper-V
A Windows technology providing a hypervisor-based virtualization solution enabling customers to consolidate workloads onto a single server.
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Windows Server Clustering
Windows Server Clustering
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Clustering: The grouping of multiple servers in a way that allows them to appear to be a single unit to client computers on a network. Clustering is a means of increasing network capacity, providing live backup in case one of the servers fails, and improving data security.
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  1. Limitless Technology 43,961 Reputation points
    2022-11-30T12:44:39.803+00:00

    Hello

    Thank you for your question and reaching out. I can understand you are having query\issues related to Hyper-V VM

    It may happen if you have VM with Dynamic Disk allocation

    Please try to shrink the VM size and to the lowest possible or Export the VM to different location having enough disk size.

    It might be that you have used more disk space at some point, and now you only use about 170GB of disk space, dynamically expanding virtual disks (VHD/VHDX) will grow as needed, but they will not release any space even if you delete data from the disk.

    If you want to reduce the upper size limit of your VHDX you would need to shrink the VHDX disk.
    To shrink a VHDX you can use the Resize-VHD PowerShell cmdlet.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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