ESX 6: There is no more space for virtual disk

Others might have a more elegant solution but my first thought would be to increase the size of the SAN volume and datastore so that there is enough room for the vmdk file. You can then either leave it as is or, if you've deleted a large amount of data and want to reclaim the space, you could provision a new, smaller, SAN volume and datastore and migrate the data from the larger to the smaller; followed by deleting the no longer needed, larger, SAN volume and datastore. As I said, there might be a better way to do it but, provided you have the extra SAN storage space, this would be a quick and dirty approach.

There was a 2 TB limit in ESXi 5.0 and 5.1. In 5.5 and later, I believe it is 62 TB. I am on ESXi 7.x and have no trouble with one of my servers being larger than 2 TB.

Snapshot or is this a thin disk, and expanded and datastore out of space ?

what is the datastore space, and also check the disk for snapshot ?

2TB is a WINDOZE MBR non GPT issue!

There's no snapshots enabled.

check the format of your Windoze disk, the 2TB limit is in the Windoze OS not ESXi.

so is this a 2TB Windoze disk, that cannot be expended, and the OS is full.

That error is an ESXi error, can you have a look at the folder in SSH.

Something does not make sense, 500GB free, and ESXi complaining the storage is running out ?

and you should not be able to extend a disk, if you have a snapshot.

True. I should have thought about that too. My VM that is larger than 2 TB has a 2+TB data volume secondary to the MBR. The boot disk is much smaller.

I was able to log on (delete a few files and reboot the server).

I'm a little concerned that none of this adds up.  I have SSH access but i am a novice, so would need help with what commands to run.

It looks like the ESX server was out of date as it only has 2MB of space free.

Any idea what commands i can run to free up space quickly?

>Any idea how to get the server back online so we can delete some of the data?

Mount it on the other VM to delete files, bear in mind that Windows doesn't zero out unused blocks so sdelete.exe may be needed.

So storage on the datastore was 2MB free?

If this VM has a snapshot it will grow quickly and stop again?

1. How did you check for Snapshots ?

2. Please have a read of me EE Article

https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/10300/HOW-TO-VMware-Snapshots-Be-Patient.html

which will show you how to check for snapshots

and we can proceed, if you have a snapshot

There are no snapshot.

I've switched all non critical server off, which has freed up 24.5 GB of space.

I'm planning on P2V one of the servers onto another ESX server.  Any idea if that requires space?

The reason it’s freed up space is because swap files have freed up the datastore

Did you check the disk settings of the VM? (Follow my EE article)

Can you provide a screenshot of the VM folder?

What type of disk is this VM?

P2Vs will require space on the destination host do you not have vCenter Server

The server has two disks C: and D:

The disks are thin provisioned.

I have 4TB free on another server, so i am hoping to P2V it onto that server.  I've switched it off.

Rather concerning the 24.5GB is now 24.18GB

So that explains it the thin provisioned disk is expanding basically you have over provisioned the storage

Eg your VMs do not have enough storage to fully expand to their maximum size

It will grow until the fixed 2TB is reached and 24GB is not much

We would recommend moving smaller machines to give you at least 2TB-1.8TB

So you are going to want to clear st least 250-300GB Moving smaller machines will be quicker

No Storsge vMotion

And once you dig out from all that, use this to un-mbr yourself - EaseUS Partition Master|Best Disk Partition Software for All Windows Users. 

I've migrated two servers, but struggling to get the NIC's to connect.

They were VMX NET 3, but VM Converter has defaulted to E10000

The NIC appears in windows, but is unable to connect.  I've tried removing and readding, and adding VMX NET 3

All add without issue, but all fail to connect.

  

Converter removes ALL networking stack, and then relies on Plug and Play.

Make sure VMware Tools is installed.

P2V/V2V are not as simple as people make out!

I've migrated two servers, but struggling to get the NIC's to connect.

They were VMX NET 3, but VM Converter has defaulted to E10000

The NIC appears in windows, but is unable to connect.

  The ESX server has been empty for nearly a year, so not sure if its a ESX or conversion issue

Thanks for you help everyone.  We P2V'd a 2TB VM onto another server.

Many Thanks