Increase Your Storage in Azure Dev VM to fix disk size issue while D365 F&O DB restore.

Hi All,

When attempting to transfer a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (D365 F&O) Tier 2 or higher environment database to your development machine, you may encounter a common hurdle: insufficient disk space within your development Virtual Machine (VM) due to the significant growth in the size of D365 F&O databases over time. Typically, the bacpac file downloaded from Lifecycle Services (LCS) is highly compressed. This blog post outlines a step-by-step guide to effectively address this scenario and manage your disk space during the restoration of a Dynamics 365 F&O database from a Tier 2 or higher environment.

Scenario: Imagine you've imported the bacpac file into your database, and as time progresses, you find yourself running low on disk space, requiring additional room to complete the database restoration.

Solution: Follow these steps to expand the available space on your drive by swapping it from another drive where memory is free:

Step 1: Begin by opening Windows Explorer and assessing which drive you can utilize to allocate space for your data drive. In this example, I'll demonstrate how to shrink (remove space from) my J drive by 50 GB and allocate that 50 GB to my G drive.

Kindly Note: Please Do not take any space from the Temporary storage drive D drive in my case.

Step 2: Press Windows + R, type "diskmgmt.msc," and hit Enter. Alternatively, you can click on the Windows icon and type "Disk Partition," as illustrated in the screenshot below.

You can see the below screen.

Step 3: Right-click on the drive you wish to shrink (in my case, the J Drive) and select "Shrink Volume."

Step 4: Enter the size in megabytes (MB). In this case, I will enter "50000," equivalent to 50 GB, and click the "Shrink" button.

Step 5: Right-click on the drive to which you want to allocate additional space (in my case, the G drive). Select "Extend Volume."

Step 6: A wizard will appear. Click the "Next" button to proceed.

Step 7: You will see available free memory in the "Available" list. Select the disk and click the "Add" button to move it to the "Selected" list. Then, click "Next" to continue.

Step 8: Click the "Finish" button to confirm the changes.

Step 9: Refresh your Windows Explorer to observe the modifications.

Kindly Note:

• This process has been tested on an Azure-hosted VM.
• No system restart is required during this procedure.
• No need to halt activities/processes or services that are utilizing the target drive.

We trust that this guide will prove helpful in your endeavor. Please feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments section.

Thank you for your time and attention.