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I recently was tasked with managing a a few servers and one is particularly turning out to be difficult. I'm relatively new to managing server on Hyper-V and so I'm careful not to mess anything up. I have a Hyper-V VM and here are the properties Hyper-V VM

When I access the Virtual Hard Disks folder inside I see these: Virtual Hard Disks

My biggest problem is the host disk is full hence pauses the VM with the warning "Disk out of Space" but inside the VM I can see there;s plenty of space as below:
Inside Hyper-V VM

My thinking was, I take some space from the VM hard Disk and get it back to the Host. But the VM has checkpoints and when I access the Checkpoints tab to try and delete them, it tells me it cant because of multiple checkpoints. Checkpoint warning

Please help me figure out how I can approach this, while also shedding some more light on the matter.

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    My thinking was, I take some space from the VM hard Disk and get it back to the Host. nope. This is self-inflicted neglect. The unneeded checkpoints. Commented Mar 20 at 8:38
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    Depending on the type of disk image - you might have the full 'size' of the disk pre-allocated, I'm not familiar with Hyper V but having space in the client/vm disks doesn't mean your host has free space, and apparently the host needs free space. Would moving some of the disks to another drive be an option? Commented Mar 20 at 8:46
  • Honestly, I feel like trying to help you would make me an accomplice to you being in over your head. Where you're at in your understanding of storage and VM storage is a dangerous place, because you're in a position to accidentally lose data. Better to admit to your supervisors that you're not prepared to handle this on your own than to make a mistake and reveal you're not prepared and also create bigger problems. Commented Mar 21 at 1:17

2 Answers 2

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File with ".avhdx" extension are differencing disks, i.e. they are based on a normal disk (".vhdx") and they only record the differences from the disk they are based on. They will grow larger over time, as more disk changes happen (it looks like yours have been active for two years).

Differencing disks are usually created during checkpoints, and they are automatically deleted when checkpoints are removed. If a VM has multiple checkpoints, each one will create a new ".avhdx" file for each disk, recording the changes from the previous one.

You should delete the VM checkpoints; this will merge the differencing disks back into the main disks and remove the .avhdx files. You should NOT delete them manually.

Documentation here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/user-guide/checkpoints.

Edit:

To see and manage (create/remove/delete) checkpoints, you have to do it from the main Hyper-V Manager console, not from the VM settings; see image below.

enter image description here

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  • I thought of that, but under checkpoint options, I get the warning as shown here: i.sstatic.net/9CcnRVKN.png Commented Mar 20 at 12:31
  • @MosesMbadi you are looking in the wrong place. See my edit. Commented Mar 20 at 14:47
  • seen it. Thank you very much. Commented Mar 21 at 12:17
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You need to add hard drive storage to the host, and move some of the VM guest(s) to it. Also review the checkpoints for appropriateness.

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