VMware Cloud Community
KuoHsinTu
Contributor
Contributor

Cannot increase datastore size in vSphere

Hello,


I have the issue as described in "Cannot grow VMFS datastore, the Increase button is disabled (1035285)".


After checking all the possible reasons described in the KB1035285 article, I find that none of the reasons have caused this issue.


So any other possible reasons have caused the "the Increase button is disabled" issue?


If you have any idea, welcome your responses,

PS:

My versions of the product are

vSphere Client v5.1,

ESXi v5.1


Thank you,

KuoHsin

Tags (2)
Reply
0 Kudos
11 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Welcome to the Community,

Please provide some details about the storage and the datastore size.

  • What's the current size and what's the size of the underlying LUN?
  • What's the VMFS version of the datastore (VMFS3 or VMFS5)?
  • What type of storage do you use (local/shared)?

Increasing the local datastore on the ESXi installation disk is not supported in the GUI and you may need to do this manually from the command line.

André

Reply
0 Kudos
KuoHsinTu
Contributor
Contributor

Some details about the storage and the datastore size:

  • What's the current size and what's the size of the underlying LUN?
    • The current size of the datastore is 1.82TB
  • What's the VMFS version of the datastore (VMFS3 or VMFS5)?
    • VMFS5
  • What type of storage do you use (local/shared)?
    • Local

So in order to increase the local datastore on the ESXi, I need to do this manually from the command line?

Is it the main reason why I cannot cannot increase datastore size in vSphere?

Thank you,

KuoHsin

Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

I can't tell you for sure what's the reason for this, but I guess it's related to having more than a single partition VMFS on the installation disk. Resizing the VMFS partition requires rewriting/reconfiguring of the partition table, which is even more complex with GPT due to the protective MBR at the end of the disk. I assume the reason why it is only supported for LUNs with a single VMFS partition is related to this complexity and also to the business/use case, where it's way more likely that a dedicated storage LUN is being resized than the local installation disk.

Also keep in mind that some RAID controllers (the vendor's drivers) currently do not support sizes >2TB (see e.g. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2006942). What I usually do in such a case, is to add the disks to the RAID set and create an additional logical volume on the new disk space.

André

KuoHsinTu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi André,

Thank you very much for answering my questions,

I found there is only one partition of the VMFS,

but there are some VFAT format volumes when I use "esxcli storage filesystem list" command.

Anyway these VFAT volumes cause the problem?

Thank you again,

KuoHsin

Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

I guess the partitions you see on the LUN are the ESXi required partitions (see http://rickardnobel.se/esxi-5-0-partitions/) and because the VMFS partition is not the only partition on this LUN you cannot increase its size.

André

KuoHsinTu
Contributor
Contributor

Thank a lot, André,

I will research in this direction to see if this is the main cause.

Best regards,

KuoHsin

Reply
0 Kudos
admin
Immortal
Immortal

How many ESX servers do you have? If you have more than one you need to ensure all hosts that have access to that LUN under vCenter have been rescanned. If you look at the datastore properties for that volume under each host you need to ensure they see the proper size of the LUN, otherwise vCenter will not allow you to grow the LUN. You can test this theory by finding a single host that sees the correct, increased size and logging into it directly with the vSphere Client and increasing the size of the datastore there. Once you have done this you can rescan the cluster and all hosts should reflect the new size.

Regards,

Corey

Reply
0 Kudos
KuoHsinTu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Corey:

I have only one ESX host.

Thank you,

KuoHsin

Reply
0 Kudos
KuoHsinTu
Contributor
Contributor

I have found a possible cause of the issue:


I use the "partedUtil get" command to get the information of the disk and it prints the following


Error: The backup GPT table is not at the end of the disk, as it should be.  This might mean that another operating system believes the disk is smaller.  Fix, by moving the backup to the end (and removing the old backup)? This will also fix the last usable sector as per the new size. diskSize (5857345536) AlternateLBA (3904897023) LastUsableLBA (3904896990)
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/disks/naa.6d4ae520b08d0d001810d3ca2cb37f6e appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 1952448512 blocks) or continue with the current setting? This will also move the backup table at the end if is is not at the end already. diskSize (5857345536) AlternateLBA (3904897023) LastUsableLBA (3904896990) NewLastUsableLBA (5857345502)
364602 255 63 5857345536
1 2048 3904896990 0 0


So it might be the wrong location of the backup GPT table causes the vShpere to disable the increase button in the UI (disk not recognized properly)?
Does it make sense?


PS: I cannot not fix the GPT table right now because of other concerns.


Thank you,
KuoHsin

Reply
0 Kudos
jlong
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I know this is old but I google searched and came across this so I thought I would add my solution.

I was in the same situation as you, I increased the size of my raid volume and my datastore was stuck at 1.82tb and I couldn't increase the size of my datastore. I am doing this on a test box so I am a little more free to try stuff.

I am booting off a USB key so there isn't anything else on the volume except for 1 datastore, which I am trying to increase. I did have the syslog pointed to this DS but I removed it thinking that is what was causing the problem. It wasn't.

I was able to increase it by unmounting the datastore and remounting it. When you remount it or re add it using the add storage wizard in the vSphere Client, you are given three options. Use existing signature, create a new one or format. At first I chose to use existing signature and it still wouldn't let me increase. Then I chose to create a new signature. That did the trick. I had to remove the VM's from inventory and re add them. All is good now.

Reply
0 Kudos
RaduzRafi
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your post, jlong. I had similar problem and before I got to kinda long and painfull CLI solution I found this post which smoothly solved my problem with impossibility to increase local datastore space after cloning disk to a larger one. Radek

Reply
0 Kudos