I am posting this as a general FYI in case others encounter this issue and are looking for a work around. Additionally, I am making this more Nutanix specific.
I recently created a base image for Windows Server 2022 Standard. I started with a small C Drive, 100GB.
When I cloned it for my first production server and I went to expand the C Drive, the default partition scheme that Server 2022 installs with, places the Windows recovery partition AFTER the primary partition. The result is an inability to expand the C Drive partition through Disk Management.
Preface: I mention these because many online forums suggested these as solutions.
- I understood that I could simply delete the recovery partition. For various reasons I did not want to.
- I understand it is best practice to install most applications etc. onto another drive. In this instance I did not want to.
- I understand that there are 3rd party applications that I can use to manipulate the partitions. I did not want to.
Solution: Overall you need to create the partitions manually and then install Windows Server 2022 afterwards.
- Create your VM in Prism, assign a drive with storage, attach Windows Server 2022 ISO, and attached the Nutanix VirtIO image to the VM as well.
- Start the VM and then follow the instructions in this Nutanik support doc through step 7 to load the VirtIO drivers and ensure the disk is accessible. https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/kbs/details?targetId=kA00e000000PVruCAG Article #000007121 **NOTE** as of at least VirtIO 1.2.2 the path in the article changes from \amd64 to \x64 so the command for Server 2022 would be drvload "E:\WIndows Server 2022\x64\vioscsi.inf"
- Then follow these instructions to create the partitions manually https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/p755zv/comment/ha1f1gp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
- Install Windows using the custom install tab and select partition 3 as your location.
After following this routine, I was successfully extended the drive on a clone.