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oRAirwolf
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Unable to expand ESXi 6.5 primary VMFS datastore

I have ESXi 6.5 installed on a Dell R420 server. I was running 2x240GB SSD's in RAID 1 through my H710 RAID controller as my boot drive. Using the online data expansion capability of the RAID controller, I added an extra SSD and converted to RAID 5, increasing my capacity from 240GB to 480GB raw for the virtual disk exposed to ESXi.

When I try to expand the VMFS, I am getting an error message saying: Failed to expand VMFS datastore datastore1 - Cannot change the host configuration.

I scrolled through the VMkernel warnings log and it shows the following:  2018-03-06T03:14:03.847Z cpu19:69706)WARNING: Partition: 1751: naa.6c81f660e4d0590021adbd1b095018e0: in-use partition 2 can not be shrunk

Here are the steps I am taking:

Click on Datastore1

Click on Increase Capacity

Expand an existing VMFS datastore extent

Select the device

Select the partition I want to expand

Click Finish

Then I get the error above.

Some other things I noticed is that when it confirms the settings, it says it is creating a VMFS 6 partition, when it is starting out as VMFS 5.  I tried shutting down all of the VM's on the machine and setting it to maintenance mode, but I still get the same error message.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong here. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

1 Solution

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a_p_
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The Embedded Host Client unfortunately allows to open the wizard for the local datastore - i.e. the disk on which ESXi is installed - although the GUI (the Windows as well as the Web Client) never supported expanding this datastore. You need to expand this datastore from the command line, see e.g. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2002461

André

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Wonlliv
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Hi there,

don't you need to select "Add an extent to existing VMFS datastore" as it has free space immediately after the extent?pastedImage_0.png

www.hyper-converged.com
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daphnissov
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I'm not entirely positive, but I don't believe you can extend a VMFS datastore which is a partition on a disk shared by the ESXi system partitions. The first thing to try regardless is to update your ESXi embedded host client to the latest if you have not done so already.

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a_p_
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The Embedded Host Client unfortunately allows to open the wizard for the local datastore - i.e. the disk on which ESXi is installed - although the GUI (the Windows as well as the Web Client) never supported expanding this datastore. You need to expand this datastore from the command line, see e.g. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2002461

André

oRAirwolf
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a.p.

Thank you for the response.  I was able to grow the VMFS using the article you linked.

I didn't have a backup, so this is me right now.

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