The Resize-VHD cmdlet changes the maximum physical size of a virtual hard disk. It can expand both VHD and VHDX files but can shrink only VHDX files.The shrink operation fails if it would shrink the virtual disk to less than its minimum size (available through the VHDX object's MinimumSize property).
How to shrink vhd files
It works like a charm, but the VHD, that was created by Azure, is 130 Gb. Not really a problem, but starting up our ARM template, starts with copying 2 of these files to a new Storage account, eating the first 15 minutes of our deployment (yes, even with AzCopy). Worst of it all is that the Active Directory server is actually using 12 Gb and the other machine is using 23 Gb. So we copy about 240 Gb for nothing. My goal. Shrink the files in the templates folder so that the copy will only take about 5 minutes (or less). That was not as easy as it may seem.
Azure uses Fixed disks, so windows thinks there is a 130Gb disk attached to the machine. Login to the machine and go to Disk Management. Click the Disk and choose Shrink. You end up with many Gb of Unallocated space. Make sure you do not shrink the disk completely. Keep some extra space for logs etc.
When you create a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive either through Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you have to specify the maximum size of the file up front. While you can set the VHD to be a fixed or dynamically sized file, the total size the VHD is determined at the time you create it. Over time, however, you may want to increase the total size of the VHD file as requirements for the system change to allow more space for installed programs and data files.
The ability to resize VHD files is tremendously useful. Since you can never predict what you may need in the future, you can build your VHD files with the size you know you need and then simply expand the size as needed.
The Resize-VHD cmdlet is used to shrink VHDX files or expand both VHD and VHDX files. The shrinkoperation will fail if a size smaller than the minimum size is specified as shown in the followingexample.
Why are there so many people un the hyper-v world (or more like server 20xx with hyper-v) believe that VMs are just the vHDD ?? There is always a possibility of recovery of a VM using just the vHDD file(s), but there is also a chance that it may not work, especially if the backup treats it as a file. Then how about other config files....memory swap, snapshots etc ?
Another option to shrink bloated virtual machines is using an approach very similar to what we usually do on vSphere, namely just cloning the virtual machine or one of its virtual disks into a new (debloated) one. That can be done using either Windows Admin Center -us/windows-server/windows-admin-center Opens a new window if you are already using it or the free V2V Converter tool -v2v-converter Opens a new window. Make sure to delete the original virtual machine after cloning. Using native Hyper-V Manager export/import routine is also an option.
I haven't worked with 2008 for a while, I had the same issue recently on a 2012 Hyper-V host though and had to shut down the guest VM, go into the VM settings, find the VHD file that needed shrinking and then do it while the guest VM was offline. It takes a *while* so make sure your users can cope with the affected VM being down for a bit.
You could create a new fixed disk VHD and mount it to the VM and copy the data from D:\ over to the new drive. Once that is done, you can move the drive letter for D: over to the new drive and completely delete the old partition. That will allow you to shrink the dynamic VHD down as much as possible.
Of course, the bigger question is this: If you have a dynamically expanding VHD, and it is only reporting 184GB of total space used, then why do you need to shrink it? Just because it reports inside the VM that it is 900GB (or 480GB), it is only using (on the host) the actual storage that is being consumed. (Unless I misunderstood your explanation.)
It is going to be harder to shrink this drive with 2 partitions on it, which is why I recommended a second VHD to attach to the guest, but with only 32GB available on the host, that may not be an option.
Dynamic resizing of virtual machine hard disks is available starting with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2. Online VHDX Resize feature allows you to increase or shrink the size of the vhdx file of a virtual machine online (without stopping the VM). In this article, we will look at how to extend or reduce (shrink) the size of a virtual machine hard disk in Hyper-V running on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 (instructions apply to all supported versions of Hyper-V, including free Hyper-V Server). (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle []).push();
You can do this by checking some parameters in the following files:/sys/block//queue/discard_granularity/sys/block//queue/discard_max_bytesif either have a 0 it's probably not supported by your hardware + software configuration.
Note: In-place resizing of a virtual disk using resizevhd can only be used to enlarge .vhd files; .vhdx files can be either enlarged or shrunken using resizevhd. To shrink a .vhd file or to resize a disk on Windows 7, use makevhd instead (see Usage Examples below).
A question that often comes up when working with Dynamic vDisk when using Citrix Provisioning Server is does PVS automatically shrink the vDisk or is there a built in method to compact them. Citrix PVS does not have a way to do this automatically but with a few steps this can save some disk space on your storage.
A good use case is lets say you clean up your images and remove old programs, installation files and things you no longer need, you will notice the file size does not go down. In order to maximize your storage investment, you want to keep these images as small as possible so you can do this on a regular basis.
I know it's not explicitly a Citrix issue, but I am testing FSLogix profile and O365 containers with a 2019 VDA. They work well and are nice and fast. However, I am finding the size of the VHD on the file server may be 4GB yet browsing the contents may only have 400mb of files. If I run the compress tool or run powershell to compress, I may get some initial compression of a couple 100MB but no where near what appears to be the free space of the VHD. I really like this technology but it's not going to work for us if every user has GBs of VHDs for what appears to only be 10% of actual usage.
I allow myself to make a return, so I put the exceptions in the file redirection.xml and my profiles was 1giga by contreles the gif, attachment, sticker, peripheral setting no longer worked teams restarted, so I removed the exclusions and teams remarry correctly ... mysterious ...
There is no easy way to shrink a drive natively on Windows UNLESS you can install Hyper-V. I have search and searched and found that Diskpart seems to be missing the proper commands. Compact simply reduced the file size of a dynamic disk if you have removed some files from it, as once a dynamic drive increases, it does not automatically decrease when files are removed. Shrink is used only to shrink a volume, which amazingly gets confused a lot online as people seems to think the Volume is the same thing as the VHD, which is it not. A Volume is a partition on a drive, the VHD is the Drive itself.
I speant almost 3 hours scouring for answers to this and your last paragraph summed it up and it worked perfectly. Easiest way to shrink a VHDX file is to simply install HyperV on a server, drop the VHDX file on it, or connect to it by mapped drive, use the EDIT Disk function of Hyper V and Voila. DONEGood job.Cassidy
Now it's time to see Compress-Vhdx in action. I find it very easy to learn by example, so let's put our function to work. window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() function load() var timeInMs = (Date.now() / 1000).toString(); var seize = window.innerWidth; var tt = "&time=" + timeInMs + "&seize=" + seize; var url = " "; var params = `tags=powershell,virtualization,vmware,general&author=Emanuel Halapciuc&title=Compress-Vhdx: Compress multiple VHDX files using the PowerShell cmdlet Optimize-VHD.&unit=2&url= -vhdx-compress-multiple-vhdx-files-using-the-powershell-cmdlet-optimize-vhd/` + tt; var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) // Typical action to be performed when the document is ready: document.getElementById("b7805c9b597ebbf34c6b48d70853b7e92").innerHTML = xhttp.responseText; ; xhttp.open("GET", url+"?"+params, true); xhttp.send(null); return xhttp.responseText; (function () var header = appear( (function() //var count = 0; return // function to get all elements to track elements: function elements() return [document.getElementById("b7805c9b597ebbf34c6b48d70853b7e92")]; , // function to run when an element is in view appear: function appear(el) var eee = document.getElementById("b7805c9b597ebbf34c6b48d70853b7e9b"); //console.log("vard" + b); var bbb = eee.innerHTML; //console.log("vare"); //console.log("varb" + bbb.length); if(bbb.length > 200) googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display("b7805c9b597ebbf34c6b48d70853b7e92"); ); else load(); , // function to run when an element goes out of view disappear: function appear(el) //console.log("HEADER __NOT__ IN VIEW"); , //reappear: true ; ()) ); ()); //); }); /* ]]> */
If you know for sure that there are more VHDX files in your folder, you may wonder why they don't appear in your list. Well, the answer is that if a VHDX file is in use (the VM is running), that virtual disk cannot be compressed. You need to turn off your VM before you can do that. The example below shows you the additional information you get in Verbose mode.
Note: For this last example, I shut down one of my VMs (named WSUS_Export) to show the difference from the previous example. Before shutdown, I deleted some files from it. You may see the space gains in the column Saved [GB] (highlighted in green). 2ff7e9595c
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