Question

ESXi Datastore reformat to increase the VMFS 3.33 block size

Asked by: jjoz

Hi All,

I'm using VMWare ESXi 4.0 164009 with the VMFS v3.33 and I'm now wondering of how to increase the disk block size into 2 MB ?
Because at the moment I couldn't create a single VM with big HDD over 256 GB :-(

During the ESXi 4 install, I wasn't asked or provided with any choice to format the local datastore with the larger block size support.

Any kind of help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

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Asked On
2009-08-23 at 18:36:34ID24675379
Tags

VMWare

,

ESXi

,

PowerVault

,

MD3000

,

SAN

,

iSCSI

,

vcenter

,

VCB

Topics

VMware

,

Hypervisor

,

Storage Technology

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-23 at 18:50:45ID: 25165192

You cant do it on the fly, the only way is shutdown all VMs, backup all data
remove the datastore(pls backup 1st!), readded with 2MB block size
once done, then you can restore and reregister all VMs
You cant perform scripted installation with esxi so you cant change block size during installation
Cheers!

 

by: jjozPosted on 2009-08-23 at 18:55:21ID: 25165211

Hi ryder0707,

Thanks for the reply, So in this case i shall add new LUN into the ESXi, then format it using the larger block size ? to serve as the temp. holding location while i reformat the existing Local datastore1 VMFS.

cmiiw.


 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-23 at 18:58:24ID: 25165219

Yeah you can do that as long you can you have a safe backup somewhere

 

by: jjozPosted on 2009-08-23 at 19:00:35ID: 25165225

Cool,

I can just offline transfer (Offline VMotion the VM) into safer place and the do the whole process, by the way, minor question though is there any way to backup all of the existing ESXi 4 settings and import it later in case i need to reinstall the ESXi servers ?

Thanks.

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-23 at 19:01:22ID: 25165228

by the way once all VMs are shutdown, unregister all VMs from the host
right click the VM in vi client to remove from inventory, do not delete from disk!
then you can cold migrate all the vm files to the new LUN
Cheers!

 

by: jjozPosted on 2009-08-23 at 19:05:02ID: 25165240

Great,

I've found the answer for my last minor question, is that by exporting the HOST PROFILE into a file and then apply it on the newly installed ESXi

Cheers.

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-23 at 19:08:39ID: 25165250

normally the important things to backup are your VM
standalone esxi can be reinstalled any time, if you are worried about all VMs setting, they are stored in their vmx file anyway
as long as you have good backup, you are safe
If you have VCS to manage multiple esx hosts then is different story

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-08-23 at 19:10:02ID: 25165254

I've found the answer for my last minor question, is that by exporting the HOST PROFILE into a file and then apply it on the newly installed ESXi
Cool :)

 

by: jjozPosted on 2009-08-23 at 19:10:09ID: 31619466

Thanks for the fast reply dude !

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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