Hey volks,
I have a problem and helpfully somebody can give me some ideas how to solve.
The story is that there is a Windows Server 2000 (no typo) machine that has four HDD's added that are on the local storage of a ESXi 4.1.0 host. All of them have inside the win2000 image a max usage of 20%. However the harddisks are provided as THICK drives - means that they have a summary of 200GB physically on the host hardware HDD. Somewhere in the past somebody added a VMware Data Recovery Server - but the Server is not available (and seems that never will be) - however, there is a snapshot that is done by this tool.
For some reference i added a screenshot compilation that shows the listing of files on the Datastorage, and on the right it shows the info regarding the snapshots for the machine.
Here are the problems:
- Machine is really slow due to whatever reason (started two weeks ago)
- Upgrading is not possible at the moment, it needs to be planned and there is some forecast
- Because the size of 200GB it is not easy to "move" the machine somewhere.
My ideas:
- Migrate the machine to a NFS volume and tell them in the migration process to convert from THICK to THIN -> my Question is: is there any risk for the OS when doing it?
- Consolidate the snapshots by using "delete all" - my Question here: What happens when VMware Data Recovery is making a Snapshot, is it the same as a "manual" snapshot and when i press "delete all" they get compared into the last status without any risk of loosing data?
- Add a USB Drive to the Hardware Server, hope that it get aknowledged by the Host and copy them files onto it. After this do the same on another ESXi host with SSD's installed and add them machine after copying the files onto the SSD
The Goal:
We know that we have to replace this server shortly, but it will need some time, unfortunately the system is down for overload each day at the moment (there is a pharmacy app running with a DB2 DB) - and we need to improve the performance till we replace the server.
Any idea will be appreciated!
Greetz and thanks in advance,
Matthias