Best practice guidance on using iSCSI from within a VM

[RichardWest]

I'm looking for guidance on setting up some new VM's in my environment. From what I understand once a VM disk has been setup up it can not be expanded at a later time if more space is needed. If I'm wrong here please let me know.

Would it then be advisable to setup a VM disk for a drive C (Windows environment), and then use the MS iSCSI connector from within the VM to establish a D drive that would be used for data files? Thus allowing iSCSI to grow the file if necessary.

[Troy_Clavell]

A disk can easily be expanded. Here is a great how to

http://vmprofessional.com/index.php?content=2k3resize

[Yattong]

hi,

You can expand and contract vmdk's with the vmkfstools command. But there is still the limitation of MS, which will not automatically see the enlargement.

You'll have to use something like partition magic etc...

Another option is to use vmconverter, to resize in one go. This can take hours.

Im not too sure whether iscsi works within a vm very well...?!?

good luck.

[bfent]

Expanding a vmdk is not very difficult. I used (method 1) and it worked very well. The 'second VM' method didn't work at all, for me.

As for connecting a VM dirrectly to a LUN, the forums elude to the possibility.

[matuscak · Accepted solution]

Actually, Microsoft did a pretty nice job of dealing with expanding a partition, at least in 2000 and up. Use the diskpart utility, select the volume and say extend. Thats it. Even works online.

[RichardWest]

Excellant!

Thanks to everyone for some many fast responses!

[RichardWest]

Matuscak,

Is this an option on the boot drive (C:), or can this only be used on other drives (D:, E:, etc) ?

[bfent]

It worked great on a non-system partition (D;, E:, etc) but did not work on the system (boot) partition (kept getting a "can not be extended" message).

[canadait]

First backup the orignal VMDK. Make a copy!!

It won't work on the C drive. You need to shut down the VM that you want to expand the drive. Attach that VMs VMDK to another "helper" server (that is off) and then boot that server up. Then use diskpart to extend the C drive of the original server. Shut down the "helper" server and detach the VMDK (do not delete). Reattach the VMDK to the orignal server and reboot. Then sit back and realize that VMs are so much nicer then physical hardware!!

[RichardWest]

Thanks for the tip!