I am running W2K8 R2 as a Hyper-V host. I have a W2K3 R2 running as a VM on it. I deleted 3 snapshots from Hyper-V Manager. This started the Merge process (I could see it in the status column), it was brief. The VM was OFF during this process. I checked the physical files folder and the avhd files still exist with vhd file. The merge process did not delete or merge the avhd files.
I started the VM and then shutdown, same thing. I see merge process in the status column briefly and then it dissapears. No errors. Checked the files folder the avhd files still there.
I researched and found manually merging it using the disk edit. Tried it but it runs half way and give an error about not being able to merge the avhd file to its parent vhd.
When I check the virtual hard drive path it is pointing to the avhd file instead of vhd file.
Any suggestions on how to merge avhd files into one vhd file?
Thanks in advance!
Hyper-V Snapshot deletion and avhd files saga
hyper-v
Best Answer
Do you have enough disk space for the merge to complete? Do you see anything in the event logs? I believe you'd be interested in the Hyper-V-Image-Management-Service log specifically, but take a look around. Hyper-V Logs
Update: How big are the AVHD's and the VHD that you're merging? I'm not sure what would be accessing this file, but you could try turning on file audit access for the VHD and the AVHD to see if something grabs it while it's merging. Maybe antivirus? Is all of this being done on local disk or are you making use of NAS or iSCSI?
Update 2: You definitively do not have enough space to perform the merge. You would need at least 286 GB to perform the operation. You have a couple of options: You can attach a USB drive and perform the merge using that extra space. Otherwise, you can perhaps do one snapshot deletion + merge at a time (if that would get you under the 133 GB).