Hyper V Checkpoint Disaster - Help!

[DWakely]

Hi All,

 

I have an production Exchange server that has a 5.8TB (yeah I know!) checkpoint.

 

I deleted the checkpoint in Hyper-V console but it failed to merge due to insufficient disk space.

 

I tried doing a live storage move using the GUI and it successfully copied about half of the data before the Hyper V management service crashed and the VM and host completely locked up requiring a hard power down of the host.

 

I have another disk on the SAN that has enough free space to copy and complete the merge of the checkpoint, but my question is what is the best way to move the storage without interrupting the underlying pending merge as the snapshot no longer shows in hyper v GUI. I don't want to have to manually merge the disks because I cant have the down time and its likely to take forever with those sizes.

 

I have come to accept that I will need to power down the machine in order to move the storage as the live move failed.

 

Before you all say it, I didn't create the checkpoint but I know I should have spotted and dealt with it before it got this out of hand!

 

Any help greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

[Steve21]

First thing I'd try is doing

 

Get-VM | Get-VMSnapshot 

on the Host and see if it recognises that there still is a snapshot for the VM

 

Steve

[DWakely]

Hi there,

 

Thanks for replying. I have run the command and it doesn't show anything. When the machine is rebooted it tries to carry on merging so it knows somewhere there is a checkpoint.

 

I wondered if i export the VM will it "remember" that it was trying to merge then carry on in the new location?

[Steve21]

You should be able to do the offline move without export, but again it does depend on how the system is seeing the VM as to whether it might get upset (Do you have backups of it ready?)

 

I take it you can't just assign the other virtual disk on the SAN to the same one temporarily to give it enough space to merge itself happy? Would save any worries in that sense, but obviously depends on your setup

 

Steve

[DWakely]

Yeah i have backups, the actual VM is only 3tb in size. I think the only option I have is to take a current backup and restore as it ignores the checkpoints and only takes the current state.

 

there inst enough space on the LUN to expand it any further unfortunately..