Hi...I have seen many misleading descriptions for the task I am trying to accomplish.
I am using ESXi 5.5 on vCenter 5.5 (Windows 2012R2).
1. Re-size of c: and release space to data store
In the start, we created Virtual servers with 200GB boot drives (C:\)
After re-sizing the C:\ of a VM using disk manager in Windows 2008 or 2012, my partition has like 80GB online (50Gb used, 30Gb free) and another 120GB un-allocated.
What I have read is that the more common or probably the only method is to use VMware Standalone converter to convert such that the VM has c:\ partition of 80GB and the rest of 120GB will be released to the data store.
Is there any other method of dong it ?
2. Re-size of Data Store and release space to SAN Storage (Dell EQL)
I might have created a volume in Dell EQL and presented as a 300GB data store to VMware .
As above, I have released 120GB of free space to the data store due to re-size of the VM from 200GB to 80GB.
Thus now I have a data store of 220GB free space (originally had only 100GB)
What I have read, the only way is to create another Dell EQL volume of 150GB, present it to VMware as a data store, then vMotion the server into the new data store then delete the old data store.
Is there any other method of dong it ?
3. Re-size of c: for vCenter and release space to data store
After re-sizing the C:\ of a VM using disk manager in Windows 2008 or 2012, my partition has like 80GB online (50Gb used, 30Gb free) and another 120GB un-allocated.
But I could not use the VMware Standalone converter directly on the ESXi host as it says my vCenter needs to be up, but I cannot convert a powered on VM ?