Hyper-V VM in a Paused-Critical State
Snapshots serve as a mechanism that allows us to revert virtual machines back to a previous state in a timely manner. A common issue when dealing with virtual machines and taking multiple snapshots occurs when the virtual machine will no longer stay running. In these scenarios, the VM will typically pause itself and reported to be in a “Paused-Critical” state. This issue is caused by a lack of system resources available to the host. More specifically, this occurs when there is not enough free hard disk space available on the host drive where the virtual machine snapshots are stored. So how does this happen? Well, an AVHD file is created every time you create a snapshot of the VM. The problem is that these files are often quite large and can add up on you before you know it. Also, deleting the snapshots from Hyper-V manager will remove the link to them but won’t delete the AVHD files off of the physical disk. Your initial reaction when winding up in a Paused-Critical state ...