Insufficient space on the Appliance partition to accommodate all the data for upgrade data option 'core'

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
During the Migration of a Windows based vCenter Server from 5.5 to 6.x Appliance at the Pre-Migration check, you the see error:

Error Message: Insufficient space on the Appliance partition to accommodate all the data for upgrade data option 'core'
Resolution: Select an upgrade option that requires less space than option core or increase the size of the insufficient partitions

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x

Cause

This issue occurs when:

• Core size >= 22.5GB
• Seat size >= 500GB
• vmdird > 17 GB

Resolution

To resolve the issue:

1. Run the below Query & confirm the size of the Seat Partition & Core Partition
   
   // MSSQL Query for checking the size of Core partition:
   SELECT SUM(p.used_page_count * 8)/1024 AS disk_size
   FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats p
   JOIN sys.objects o
   ON o.object_id = p.object_id
   WHERE o.type_desc = 'USER_TABLE'
   AND o.is_ms_shipped = 0
   AND UPPER(o.name) NOT LIKE 'VPX_HIST_STAT%'
   AND UPPER(o.name) NOT LIKE 'VPX_SAMPLE_TIME%'
   AND UPPER(o.name) NOT LIKE 'VPX_TASK%'
   AND UPPER(o.name) NOT LIKE 'VPX_EVENT%'
   AND UPPER(o.name) NOT LIKE 'VPX_PROPERTY_BULLETIN%';
   
   // MSSQL Query for checking the size of Seat partition:
   SELECT SUM(p.used_page_count * 8)/1024 AS disk_size
   FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats p
   JOIN sys.objects o
   ON o.object_id = p.object_id
   WHERE o.type_desc = 'USER_TABLE'
   AND o.is_ms_shipped = 0
   AND (UPPER(o.name) LIKE 'VPX_HIST_STAT%'
   OR UPPER(o.name) LIKE 'VPX_SAMPLE_TIME%'
   OR UPPER(o.name) LIKE 'VPX_TASK%'
   OR UPPER(o.name) LIKE 'VPX_EVENT%');
   
   Note:
   • Core DB Partition (disk-db) – Main partition where the actual inventory information is stored.
   • Seat Partition (disk-seat) – Partition where Task/Events, Performance Data etc are stored.
2. Take the back up of the vCenter Server Database.
3. Purge the Tasks & Events to reduce the size of the Seat Partition.
4. Purge VPX_TEXT_ARRAY to reduce the size of Core Partition.

For more information, see VPX_TEXT_ARRAY table growing in size causes the vCenter Server database to run out of space.

Workaround:
If the vmdird database is in GB's instead of MB size, this could be because of vmdir database is filled with whitespaces.

Run the below command on the PSC node by removing the white space in vmdir. Please refer this KB Article: https://ikb.vmware.com/s/article/52387

• Please download mdb_copy file and run the below command,
  • C:\>mdb_copy.exe -c C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\data\vmdird destination directory
  • Example: C:\Users\test\Downloads\52387_Windows_mdb_copy.exe>Windows_mdb_copy.exe -c D:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\data\vmdird\ D:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\data\
• This will reduce the size of vmdird database. 

Additional Information

"Insufficient space on the source export partition '/'" upgrading vCenter Serverfrom 6.x to 6.7