hdd space allocation when p2v

[msanjay196]

Hi,

I have a Exchange 2003 on windows 2003. We have a VMWare Esx4.0 server.

I want to P2V the exchange server. The exchange server has c:\ at 70GB (of which free space is 44GB)

D:\ at 410 GB (of which free space is 251GB)

E:\ at 70GB (of which free space is 69GB)

when I do the P2V, will the virtual disk need to be as large as the space allocated to C, D, E

in other words, do I need to that much free space on the Esx4.0 box ?

Or could I do fine with less space ?

Thanks in advance

[Troy_Clavell]

if you are not resizing you'll need the total of all drives combined.

So, 550 (plus I would leave 15% free on the LUN for snapshot growth). Just be careful with your block sizes. You'll need a minimum, if 3 drives, of a 2MB block size

[msanjay196]

Hi,

Can you elaborate what you mean by the block sizes?

What do u mean by 3 drives of 2MB block size.

Their is no LUN. Its all direct attached storage - its one HP server which has the hard drives locally with RAID 5 ( we have total of 4 drives for this RAID)

Thanks (again)

[Troy_Clavell]

see here

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003565

you cannot have a single hdd presented to a VM, that exceeds your block size. Check Configuration--Storage. Highlight a DS, and you'll see block size at the bottom.

[msanjay196]

Hi,

I checked our server. We have a block size of 4MB and the filesystem is VMFS3

As per the article, the largest virtual disk file that I can have is 1TB.

or does it mean that the maximum size of the filesystem is 1TB?

We are already have 837GB and almost full in the Esx4 server. So I was planning to add 2 more hard drives on the RAID 5 array - which currently has 4 hard drives of 300GB each.

Thanks :smileycool:

[Troy_Clavell]

or does it mean that the maximum size of the filesystem is 1TB?

what that means is you can't have a single HDD presented to the virtual machine larger than 1024GB

[msanjay196]

1024MB = 1GB ??

[Troy_Clavell]

sorry, fixed typo 1024GB

[msanjay196]

Thanks to both of you!! :smileycool:

[f10]

When you do a P2V you will get an option to modify the size of the volume so lets say if C: 70GB but the available space is 40GB you can specify the size of 40GB instead of 70GB but you have to ensure that this 40GB is available on the datastore where the VM would be created.

Hope this information helps :smileyhappy:

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