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HenrikElm
Contributor
Contributor

Expand disk in GUI?

Hi all! We haev upgraded to VC 2.5 / ESXi 3.5 and all works well. I just tried using the GUI to expand a virtual hard disk from 5 Gb to 15 Gb and entered new size for the disk in the VI GUI client. It says reconfiguring for a second, says completed and all looks like ok. But if I go back and look at size again, its back to 5Gb and if I look at it botted in disk manager, its still the same size.

Is there any more action to take apart from entering new size in the GUI to make it the resize "stick"? I will soon resort to using RCLI and the good 'ol vmkfstools syntax, but that does not feel right..

Best regards

Henrik

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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Ive done this before and done exactly as you explained, no other actions needed, have you checked the guest OS to see how much it thinks it has ? I was just wondering if you had allocated the disk space but it has not grown as you are not actually using it yet.

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Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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HenrikElm
Contributor
Contributor

Like I said, I see no difference of disksize inside the OS. Also, the VC GUI reverts to the old size immediately..

Very strange.. No error message anywhere..

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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Definately strange, sounds like you are doing everything correctly as that is what I have done in the past, sorry Im out of ideas, will be interested when you find the answer though.

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Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

There have been other posts to the same effect. The GUI not working as it should. I've always had better success with the vmkfstools.

-KjB

Message was edited by: kjb007 : Removed the "dumb question" since the options are grayed out

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yes, they were off, have you tried the following where 24g is the size

you are exending to and the path is the path of your vmdk file

vmkfstools -X 24g /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/myOS.vmdk

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Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yes, they were off, have you tried the following where 24g is the size you

are exending to and the path is the path of your vmdk file

vmkfstools -X 24g /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/myOS.vmdk

Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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HenrikElm
Contributor
Contributor

Ah! Ok.. I will install the Remote CLI (as I run ESXi) and try the command instead (like in the "old" days..)

Will post how that worked out..

/Henrik

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alanrenouf
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Will be interesting to see if you get any error messages as im guessing thats what the GUI effectively does.

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Blog: http://virtu-al.net Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanrenouf Co-author of the PowerCLI Book: http://powerclibook.com
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casperinmd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have a very similar issue, same problem but I am doing a shrink. I found a KB article stating that it is misleading when it says "done" inside of the guest using VMware tools shrink option. If I edit the HDD and simply make it a smaller size and click OK, it configures OK, but when I go back to check, it is still the old size.

Maybe your grow command is simply taking ESX some time to complete in teh background? For me, it has been 30 mintues and going from 20g to 8g still has not completed, and that is on a quad cpu, dual core machine with 64g of RAM..I don't think anything is really happening...

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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

You can NOT shrink a vmdk file. You can create a smaller one and copy your data over, but that is the only way to make a disk "effectively " smaller. You can always use vmware converter as well, and adjust your volume sizes from there, which is even easier than copying/removing. The shrink command from the vmware tools does not actually make the vmdk smaller on an ESX host. If you're using sparse files, which you can do in NFS datastore, then it may help you there, but not on regular VMFS datastores.

The actual grow command takes about 3-5 seconds, if that. The vmkfstoolsl will show you that if you run it command line.

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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HenrikElm
Contributor
Contributor

Very simple solution! There was a snaphot taken, which prevented the expand to happen. I removed snapshot and the expand went perfectly!

VMWare, please add a warning message that says why this expand fails in the GUI, not just revert back to old size.

/Henrik

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pcmd
Contributor
Contributor

Wow! I totally agree.

I had this exact situation. The snapshot in my case was from vReplicator (which it uses in the type of replication that I have it configured to do).

I simply removed the replication job, it got rid of the snapshot and the resize within the GUI worked just fine.

Thanks a lot for posting what you found.....it saved me bunches of troubleshooting.

:,`:`.:,`:`.:,`:`.:,`:`.:,`:`.:,`:`.:,~`:

Thanks for your kindness and patience as I continue this adventure in the world of virtualization.

Bullies need not reply Smiley Wink

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