VM disk running low on space

[jnachman]

I am a VM running low on space, Host is ESXI 5.1 and the VM is server 2008 R2.  This drive is just a storage disk on the host and has no OS on it.  The drive is provisioned thick can I just up the disk space in vSphere and then expand it in the OS without having issues or shutting down the VM?

[a_p_]

Yes, expanding the virtual disk followed by resizing the guest's partition should work without downtime.

André

[a_p_]

Discussion moved from Community Website Help  to VMware ESXi 5

[SavkoorSuhas · Accepted solution]

Yes, you can do it on the fly without any issues.

Please make sure that this VMDK sticks to configuration maximum for 5.1 i.e 2 TB

[jnachman]

Thanks A.P. !

[jnachman]

So my volume is already at 2TB on that drive, should I create a new volume and span the two???

[jnachman]

My Virtual volume is at 2TB but I am using vSphere 6 to manage this ESXI 5.1 host/VM.  With that being said can I up the volume over 2TB without issues?

[a_p_]

No, support for >2TB volumes was introduced with vSphere 5.5, i.e. the host needs to run ESXi 5.5 or later (for further details see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2058287)

With versione prior to v5.5 the maximum virtual disk size was 2TB minus 512 Bytes. Howevwer, for virtual disks which need to be snapshotted the maximum was ~2,032GB due to the metadata overhead in a snapshot .vmdk file.

André