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Command View 8 Shrink Lun capability with Windows 2003

 
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JonathanM
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Command View 8 Shrink Lun capability with Windows 2003

I have several LUNS that i am needing to shrink that are presented to a Windows 2003 host. Does 2003 support this? If so, what is the recommended method of performing a LUN shrink?
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Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor
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Re: Command View 8 Shrink Lun capability with Windows 2003

No, Windows 2003 does NOT support LUN shrink and the ability is even limited on W2008.

- backup the data
- delete the partitions on the vdisk
- shrink the disk
- reboot the server to cleanly pick up new size
- recreate the partition(s) and file system(s)
- restore the data

It should still be a bit faster than a vdisk delete/recreate.
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JonathanM
New Member

Re: Command View 8 Shrink Lun capability with Windows 2003

Thanks for the response. I have been reading about Windows 2008 capabilities, but i have not tried them myself. In what ways is it limited? It's starting to seem that LUN shrink does nothing more than save you a few clicks short of deleting your vdisk and creating a new one and re-presenting it to the host.
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: Command View 8 Shrink Lun capability with Windows 2003

Ahem, I can assure you that it is a bit more complex ;-)

Windows 2008 will remove any 'ordinary' files from the disk area that is to be removed and then tell the EVA through the VDS interface to shrink the virtual disk. (The move is not possible with pagefiles, VSS data or NTFS metadata in that area).

NTFS metadata currently presents a big problem. If you grow from 4 to 8 GigaBytes, Windows will put a small metadata tag after 4GB. This prevents a shrink smaller than 4GB. If you now grow to 12GB, you cannor shrink smaller than 8GB.

- NOTICE: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 NTFS volume shrink limitations

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c01429986
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