Expanding Storage on ESX 3.5 Server

[philmillward]

Hi All,

i am fitting a new hard drive in an existing server next week and am going to expand the raid array.

We are running ESX 3.5 on Linux and was wondering if there was anything else i need to do in ESX itself to make it aware of the new space available

Regards

Phil

[TobiasKracht]

You cannot expand VMFS storage, instead you need to create a new one.

StarWind Software R&D

[VMmatty]

Your options are to create a new datastore and keep it separate from the existing datastore, or to use an extent to merge the two datastores together as one. You'll see a lot on these forums about the dangers of extents but I'm not all that afraid of them. if you're looking to keep one single datastore then an extent is the way to go. Otherwise create a second datastore and balance out your virtual machines across both.

[philmillward]

Hi thanks for the reply. I would like to keep a single datastore so is there any documentation or what are the steps to perform the action i require. Thanks

Phil

[VMmatty]

Hey Phil,

Check out the following thread for some instructions how to create an extent to expand your VMFS partition.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/133198