expanding a vmfs running partition

[oldmetalguy]

I have an iSCSI HP EVA 4400, that has 2 vmfs partitions (vdisks). One is formated with a 1MB block size, the other is 8MB block size.

My ultimate goal is to have all the vm's that are on the 1MB partition on the 8MB partition, blow away the 1MB partition, and then the space from that onto the 8MB partition.

I've never increased an exisiting VMFS partition, so I don't know what to expect (I've never needed to). Is it as simple (using 4.1) as deleting the 1MB one, adding that space into the vdisk of the 8MB one, and then telling ESXi to increase it? Will it use all it can find, or do I need to tell it how much to increase it by?

Are the VM's that will be on the 8MB partition safe? I don't have a fast way of shutting them all down and backing them up.

Any help would be appreciated.

[ab_lal]

You message is a little confusing however i guess that you want all VM's to be on the Datastore which is created with 8MB Block size.

1.) Move all VM's which are on the 1MB datastore by migrating the VM -> Change Datastore -> Choose Advanced (if required to move few disks)

2.) Once all the VM's from 1MB Datastore are moved, Remove the datastore.

3.) Create the Datastore once again using 8 MB block size if required.

[mittim12 · Accepted solution]

The way I read your post is that you want to migrate everything to the 8MB block size datastore, delete the 1MB block size datastore, and take that space to extend the 8MB datastore to a larger size. If that's what you want to do then you should give this blog post a read, http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/26/resizing-your-vmfs-the-right-way-exploring-the-next-version-....

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[oldmetalguy]

thanks mittim12, thats what I needed!