Expand C partition on server

[YeOldeStonecat]

I've pulled those moves with "pay for" software like Paragon and Acronis, on servers. Nail biting during that first reboot, wouldn't do it on a clients server without a paid "server" version....to get support, "just in case". Last time I used them, was near $1k...>I'd just get 1x server license per client job.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yeah, I don't muck around with C partitions on servers. NOTHING touches those things but Windows itself once it's live. Have one system blow up in your face just once while trusting a client's "backup" and you'll never do that again.

 

[HCHTech]

I hope we get the post-mortem on this job from @timeshifter . Things I would do without any concern on a workstation always seem to be stressful on a server.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Keep this in the tool box:

 

[timeshifter]

I hope we get the post-mortem on this job from @timeshifter . Things I would do without any concern on a workstation always seem to be stressful on a server.

Got it done. Will provide details soon.

 

[timeshifter]

I tried @Sky-Knight to use Datto but it was not to be. It was close. I was able to mount the C and D partitions on the Datto and copy them over as VHDx files. However, the files were full size - i.e. the C drive was a 60GB file and the D drive was a 1TB file. The C drive copy ran for about 40 minutes and didn't finish before I gave up. No way I was going to do a 1TB copy.

I created two new virtual disks. One 128GB and one 1TB. I attached them to the current VM and booted from Macrium and cloned C to the 128GB and D to the 1TB. Forget how long the first one took, but the second one took about two hours.

Then I attached those new drives to a new VM with exactly matched settings. I could have removed the drive from the original VM but was weary of all the checkpoints and possible complications and didn't want to disturb anything that I could revert to in case this didn't work.

Booted on the first try and looked great. Only problem was the IP. I had hard coded 192.168.0.2 to the original server. This one came up pulling a new one from DHCP. When I hard coded the new one to 192.168.0.2 I got some kind of warning not to run both VMs. When I booted back with the new hard coded IP I didn't have working Internet connection(s). Yellow caution on the system tray network icon. Ended up setting up a reserved IP on my Meraki gateway so the machine would pull 192.168.0.2. Still set DNS manually to 127.0.0.1 and 8.8.8.8 like I had before. Seemed to work fine.

With that cleared up they've been running without complaints for three days.

I did have to fix the Datto backup. It was complaining about missing volumes - had two C and two D, with the originals missing. Datto support help me straighten that out.

I'm glad I've got fresh VHDx volumes out of the process. The single 4 year old VHDx with several checkpoints made me a little nervous.

Thanks for all the input. If you see I left any ticking timebombs feel free to point that out.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yes, Datto when asked to make a virtual disk file will create a thick file... Sorry about that, I neglected that itsy bitsy ever so tiny utterly critical detail.

What I neglected to mention was I generally create a VM to boot to Datto's BMR ISO, and "restore" the partition into the VHDX I just made and attached to the new VM. I can move that VHDX file to the live VM later. Which in effect does what you did with Macrium, just sourcing the Datto backups. That way I get a thin provisioned drive made out of the partition I want and not that thick provisioned mess Datto provides. This means I'm not wasting time with empty data... speeds things up.

But if the system was live during this you'd wind up with out of date restores... so you have to down the VM just to keep it from changing while you're restoring the backups. And yes, when copying huge files, they take FOREVER. Note, an actual restore would take this length of time. If this isn't acceptable you need an SSD powered Datto appliance attached to a switch that can push more than 1gbit!

 

[SAFCasper]

Just thought - Datto is based on ShadowProtect isn't it? Do they have the HeadStart Restore feature?

Too late now but that might have been the perfect solution here. It's basically incremental backups but in reverse... incremental restores. You restore a full backup in advance then keep applying incremental restores before finally choosing to finalise it. So you can do this:

- Restore the backup several days in advance but don't finalise it
- Keep taking regular backups and restoring incrementally until the switchover day
- On switchover day take a backup just before shutting down and restore that incremental
- Shut down the server and take a final backup
- Restore that incremental and finalise.
Cuts your downtime massively even for huge servers because the only data being restored is the incremental between your final two backups.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

When mounting fresh restores of virtual machines, esp when moving to a different hypervisor host, NICs will usually default to "obtain auto" since it's a new virtual NIC injected. So..having it pull from DHCP is normal. Hence why the first bootup of a restore/moved DC will take a long time to boot, since DNS is failing..and with DCs....DNS is the foundation of active directory. You just have to patiently wait til you can log in and go manually set the TCP/IP props...assigning DNS to itself, reboot...things start to pickup better from then on.

 

[HCHTech]

Sorry about that, I neglected that itsy bitsy ever so tiny utterly critical detail.

Wait - do you work for [insert vendor here] technical support? Over the years, I've lost count of the times I was given a specific procedure to follow and run into the completely-missing-but-utterly-critical detail! These days, I'll even ask that question - "Thanks - now tell me, what tiny but critically important detail have you left out?" You'd be surprised at the conversations that follow - I learn more about their software/hardware/whatever in those conversations than anywhere else, I swear.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@SAFCasper Datto is no longer based on ShadowProtect, they have their own tech now. They do still also have a ShadowProtect agent available! But, Datto for Windows is NOT ShadowSnap.

They also have a headstart restore feature too, but while using it you can't make changes to the VM's configuration. HCHTech was trying to adjust partition sizes while he was at it. The most efficient way I know to do that is a BMR restore into a VM so the hypervisor can write out the virtual disks correctly.

@HCHTech I do apologize, I knew you needed that detail because you said you weren't familiar with Datto. But I haven't had to do this in a bit, and until you came back I honestly didn't think about it. It's one of those things I do just out of habit!

 

[SAFCasper]

@SAFCasper Datto is no longer based on ShadowProtect, they have their own tech now. They do still also have a ShadowProtect agent available! But, Datto for Windows is NOT ShadowSnap.

They also have a headstart restore feature too, but while using it you can't make changes to the VM's configuration. HCHTech was trying to adjust partition sizes while he was at it. The most efficient way I know to do that is a BMR restore into a VM so the hypervisor can write out the virtual disks correctly.

Good to know. We stopped using ShadowProtect 3-4 years back as we felt it was stagnating. So I've never paid much attention to Datto in recent years thinking it was simply a turnkey implementation of ShadowProtect.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Good to know. We stopped using ShadowProtect 3-4 years back as we felt it was stagnating. So I've never paid much attention to Datto in recent years thinking it was simply a turnkey implementation of ShadowProtect.

That's kind of sad, because Shadow Protect is still quite good.

But I don't sell it much anymore... and just this last week I realized I'll likely never sell it again. Heck... I'm looking at abandoning Datto, at least for smaller installs. Synology with a pair of 8tb drives in it provides 8TB of mirrored storage to the LAN with 2GBIT teamed NIC, for a price of ~$900.

And that $900 provides a shadow protect like imaging system for unlimited VMs on either HyperV or vSphere, as well as the ability to do free backups of both GSuite AND M365.

And then you just pipe all that data off to Backblaze or whatever... I'm trying to find a weakness here... but it seems that Synology has their crap together to own this market.

If I want to use SPX or whatever their cloud service thing is, I still need local storage to house it all, and I've not addressed having a local copy of all my cloud data. Synology simply ticks every box... even boxes Datto cannot tick!

 

[SAFCasper]

That's kind of sad, because Shadow Protect is still quite good.

But I don't sell it much anymore... and just this last week I realized I'll likely never sell it again. Heck... I'm looking at abandoning Datto, at least for smaller installs. Synology with a pair of 8tb drives in it provides 8TB of mirrored storage to the LAN with 2GBIT teamed NIC, for a price of ~$900.

And that $900 provides a shadow protect like imaging system for unlimited VMs on either HyperV or vSphere, as well as the ability to do free backups of both GSuite AND M365.

And then you just pipe all that data off to Backblaze or whatever... I'm trying to find a weakness here... but it seems that Synology has their crap together to own this market.

If I want to use SPX or whatever their cloud service thing is, I still need local storage to house it all, and I've not addressed having a local copy of all my cloud data. Synology simply ticks every box... even boxes Datto cannot tick!

ShadowProtect was awesome when we primarily dealt with physical servers. It's still a great product but when it comes to fully virtualised workloads I feel like they fell behind the competition.

For our larger clients we use Veeam on a refurbished server to essentially build our own backup appliance. Physical production server could fail completely and within 10-15 minutes I can remote in to "instant restore" all their guests to the Veeam server. We also run copy-jobs to S3 storage or a Synology at another branch office.

Veeam is free for up to 10 VM's so basically we take those savings on software licencing and put them towards the refurbished hardware. Some clients have the paid version of Veeam because they want support but I've never had to call them once.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@SAFCasper Makes sense, I just feel like Storage Craft is just like 3CX... a company that makes a wonderful product that has largely been either bypassed by the market at large, or has maneuvered into a position where it's going to get crushed between Microsoft and some other juggernaut.

 

[NETWizz]

This will be cake. I would just use Hyper-V and present a new physical disk of at or about 1 TB and then within Windows shutdown everything with access to D: and copy or image everything to the new virtual drive.

From there, remove the letter D from the old and assign it to the new. Now delete that old partition that was D, so it all becomes unallocated space after C. Finally expand C.

If you overallocated and are concerned, you might after deleting D downsize the volume for disk 0, but you probably have shutdown to do that. At any rate, say you reduce it to 500 GB, you can then expand C from 60 GB to 500 GB.

Whatever works, but there are enough tools in Windows and your VM suite to do all of this without third-party utilities if you choose.