[SOLVED] Hyper-V Linux Installation Takes Well Over 100GB on New VHD?

[SparkyTech934]

Hi all!

So, I'm in the middle of deploying a server using Windows Server 2019 Standard. I will be running a Linux VM (Zorin OS 16 Core) through Windows Hyper-V that will be hosting Nextcloud.

I have 4x 4TB HDDs in a RAID 5 array that ended up totaling around 10.3TB of useable space. When I set up the VM for Zorin OS, I specify the size of the virtual hard disk to 8TB (8000GB). When I run the installer, the operating system takes forever to install, and by the time it's done, the VHD says that its already about 140GB in size (after installing only). For reference, I used LVM and Encryption in the installation options. Does anyone have a clue why this would be? Is it perhaps that specifying a total size of 8TB means that a massive virtual partition table has to be created and stored within the Hyper-V VHD?

I don't know how an installation of linux could possibly take as much space on the VHD as it does in this situation, but to be fair, unless it impacts the actual 8TB of total capacity, I really don't care.

Would love to hear some thoughts on this, as I've never experienced an installation on Hyper-V taking up such a large initial chunk of storage. Thanks in advance, I appreciate you all!

 

[Alabalcho]

I would not give your guest OS the whole 8TB as single VHD, but rather small drive for the OS, and large one for the data. I am not Zorin fan, but other popular Linux distros don't have trouble having several VHDs configured as sda, sdb etc.

 

[SparkyTech934]

I would not give your guest OS the whole 8TB as single VHD, but rather small drive for the OS, and large one for the data. I am not Zorin fan, but other popular Linux distros don't have trouble having several VHDs configured as sda, sdb etc.

Hello! That's actually a great suggestion, I don't know why I didn't think of that. I'll try to figure out how I can install Nextcloud on the guest OS, but point its data storage to the other drive. I may also switch to ubuntu, but I just much prefer ZorinOS. To be fair, as a server, Ubuntu may be the better choice, but Zorin is just a better looking Ubuntu.

I wonder if the same issue will happen if I add an 8TB drive (as /dev/sdb) and the partition table or whatever metadata will take up 140GB on it again. We'll see I guess! Thanks again, and I'd love to hear from anyone else if there's a specific reason the install on a Hyper-V VHD takes up so much space initially.