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blacktusk
Contributor
Contributor

Problem extending VMFS5.54 Datastore on ESXI5

I have extended my RAID5 array on a DELL R710 Server running ESXI5. There is only a single RAID volume, and the LUN already contains the Datastore.

I have followed the KB article, http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&e..., and have successfully increased the partition size and Extent.

~ # partedUtil get "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d4ae5206eff6700ff000031032ff019" 

364602 255 63 5857345536

1 64 8191 0 128

5 8224 520191 0 0

6 520224 1032191 0 0

7 1032224 1257471 0 0

8 1257504 1843199 0 0

2 1843200 10229759 0 0

3 10229760 4000000000 0 0

where Partition 3 is my primary partition.

I am now stuck at Step 11, growing the Filesystem.

As you can see my Extent is now 1.86TB and my Datastore remains at 926GB, and I am unbale to increase from withing VSphere..

Datastore1.jpg

When I attempt to run the growfs tool as per step 12;

vmkfstools --growfs "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d4ae5206eff6700ff000031032ff019:3" "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d4ae5206eff6700ff000031032ff019:3"

I get the error;

Not found
Error: No such file or directory

This error has been reported by a number of others in various forums, but I have not seen a successful resolution other than copying the datastore and recreating from scratch... There are 20 VMs on the datastore in about 350GB of storage so it is a pain to try and back this all up to recreate.

Does anyone have experience with using growfs with an existing Datastore?

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4 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
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Has this host been upgraded from version 4.x?

What's the output of:

partedUtil getptbl "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d4ae5206eff6700ff000031032ff019"

In case this disk does not already contain a "gpt" partition table you may need to reinstall ESXi 5 to be able to access a logical volume larger than ~2TB.

André

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blacktusk
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Hi Andre

Thanks for your response, No, the host was a clean install of ESXI 5, it has never run any other version. The only change of significance was installation of a new Perc RAID controller so that we could change the array from RAID1, to RAID 5. This was done via DELL Openmanage, and all worked ok with the Datastore intact. The problem is in extending the Datastore.

~ # partedUtil getptbl "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d4ae5206eff6700ff000031032ff019"
gpt
364602 255 63 5857345536
1 64 8191 C12A7328F81F11D2BA4B00A0C93EC93B systemPartition 128
5 8224 520191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
6 520224 1032191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
7 1032224 1257471 9D27538040AD11DBBF97000C2911D1B8 vmkDiagnostic 0
8 1257504 1843199 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
2 1843200 10229759 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
3 10229760 4000000000 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0
~ #

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a_p_
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After a second look at the partition table I noticed "3 10229760 4000000000 ..."

Is this the value

partedUtil getUsableSectors "/vmfs/devices/disks/..."

from step 7 of the KB returned? Or why did you set this value?

André

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blacktusk
Contributor
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I set this value as I wanted to double the capacity of the datastore, I also wanted to keep some of the RAID storage in reserve in case we were able to create a separate datastore in future version of ESXI. I realise that the current version of ESXI does not support a second DS on the same LUN. the 40000000 was an arbitray value, but I could not find any reference to specific sector boundary requirements. As you can see the Extents calculation looks ok on the Properties page, and the size of 1.86TB is roughly double my exisiting DS.

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