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Adding space to ESXi 4.1 after adding a new drive to the RAID set
I am admittedly a novice when it comes to vmware, and this is a production system. Recently in order to add some more storage space I added a single additional drive to my RAID 5 set. I was able to get the Dell openmanage installed in ESXi and then expand the RAID to use the new drive.
Here is where the problem starts, I now need to add that space so that I can allocate it to one of the VMs on the server. I have been looking through the communities and found conflicting information about if and how it can be done.
If I go into the Volume properties using the vSphere client I can see the space listed for the device, but the partition only lists the old size. I took both VMs offline and hit increase, but there are no devices listed on the screen that opens.
I have attached a screenshot of the volume properties if it will help.
I have Windows backups of the servers, but no snapshots or anything like that. I can attach a USB drive to offload the images to if I need to.
Can someone please give me an easy to follow walkthrough on doing this? It seems that it is possible, but I also need to do this with the least downtime possible, as the server is accessed 16 to 20 hours a day normally.
Here is where the problem starts, I now need to add that space so that I can allocate it to one of the VMs on the server. I have been looking through the communities and found conflicting information about if and how it can be done.
If I go into the Volume properties using the vSphere client I can see the space listed for the device, but the partition only lists the old size. I took both VMs offline and hit increase, but there are no devices listed on the screen that opens.
I have attached a screenshot of the volume properties if it will help.
I have Windows backups of the servers, but no snapshots or anything like that. I can attach a USB drive to offload the images to if I need to.
Can someone please give me an easy to follow walkthrough on doing this? It seems that it is possible, but I also need to do this with the least downtime possible, as the server is accessed 16 to 20 hours a day normally.
VMwareIT AdministrationStorageDellRAID
Last Comment
TLG01
If it's the actual Windows partition you need increased then right click the VM in question > Select Settings > click on the hard drive and click the up arrow to increase it's size > from there you will need to open up the Windows disk management from within Computer Management and select the partition in question then right click it > Select "Expand" and go through the last few steps to add the newly increased space to your hard drive.
If if's the datastore, do as hanccocka said in the first comment.
If the datastore is from a SAN and all of your other datastores/VMs have their hard drives residing on this SAN you could move them to another datastore, and recreate the datastore running low on space.
If if's the datastore, do as hanccocka said in the first comment.
If the datastore is from a SAN and all of your other datastores/VMs have their hard drives residing on this SAN you could move them to another datastore, and recreate the datastore running low on space.
ASKER
Thank you for the quick responses. I tried doing the increase, but when the window opens nothing is displayed to work with. I attached a screenshot of what I get. I tried this with both VMs offline, and I have also restarted the server as well.
You will have to Backup, Reformat the Datastore, Restore.
Is your ESXi installed on the same RAID?
Is your ESXi installed on the same RAID?
ASKER
I am honestly not sure, I think that is installed on the other smaller RAID set. I was hoping that I would not have to do that, but if that is the only way then I guess that is what will have to be done.
Could I create another partition with the new space and then just add that as another partition to the Windows guest OS?
Could I create another partition with the new space and then just add that as another partition to the Windows guest OS?
No, you cannot allocated it direct to the Guest OS.
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ASKER
Thanks for all the help hanccocka. That seemed to be the answer, although I had someone much more comfortable with Linux and its commands help with the procedure, it solved the problem.
It may be easier to Backup the datastore and Virtual Machines, and reformat the existing datastore.
otherwise you will have to use the console, and PartUtil to expand the datastore manually.