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MaDax
Contributor
Contributor

Extending VMFS disks created with thick option?

I created a disk using the thick option, this was necessary as I needed to share the disk between different hosts via a san, the guest OS is Linux and am using GFS.

I just attempted to grow the disk from 250 to 260GB, it appeared to work ok but when I attempted to boot the virtual machine it halted with an error "VMware ESX server cannot open the virtual disk /vmfs/volumes.... for clustering Please verify the disk was created using the thick option"

I then attempted to convert it to a thick disk, but still no luck.

Any ideas? I'll paste the console output below.

Cheers

Dax

Created the disk, which worked fine:

#vmkfstools -a lsilogic -d thick -c 250000m /vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/fs-home.vmdk

Extended the disk:

\# vmkfstools -d thick -X 260G /vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/fs-home.vmdk

Accepted this command without any problems, but then the host wouldn't boot.

Attempted to convert to thick:

#vmkfstools -j /vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/fs-home.vmdk

The virtual disk (/vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/fs-home.vmdk) cannot be inflated type: <11>, capacity: <284541583360>, space used: <284541583360>.

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9 Replies
wobbly1
Expert
Expert

What is your block size on the VMFS? if its 1MB then 256G is the max virtual disk size.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vi301/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

The only way to create a larger vmdk is to reformat the vmfs using a larger block size but obviously this is data distructive.

MaDax
Contributor
Contributor

Ahh, that'll be it...I never specified it when I created the disk so it probably defaulted to 1mb, I'll try again!

Cheers

Dax

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davidbarclay
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Beat me to it, I was trying to find the info in the PDFs!

MaDax, don't forget to give Wobbly points.

Dave

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MaDax
Contributor
Contributor

...Unfortunately that didn't work, I just created a new disk, with -b 4m option. As before it created ok, but when I tried to re-size it it would no longer boot with the error stating it should be a 'thick' disk.

Exactly what I entered in the console:

\# vmkfstools -b 4m -a lsilogic -d thick -c 260000m /vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/home.vmdk

After which it works fine, booted, partitioned ok and formatted with GFS.

#vmkfstools -d thick -X 265G /vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/home.vmdk

After which it wouldn't boot, so attempted to convert it anyway:

\# vmkfstools -j /vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/home.vmdkThe virtual disk (/vmfs/volumes/FileStore/fs/home.vmdk) cannot be inflated type: <11>, capacity: <284541583360>, space used: <284541583360>.

So, still no luck.

Any more ideas?

Cheers

Dax

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MaDax
Contributor
Contributor

Tried again, and didn't fix as expected.

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kix1979
Immortal
Immortal

The underlying VMFS volume has to have the 1/2/4/8M block size. You don't set that on a per VMDK basis, but on the whole volume. You will have to reformat the volume to allow for a larger VMDK file.

Thomas H. Bryant III
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MaDax
Contributor
Contributor

The whole volume has a block size of 8M, currently has 670G allocated to it and I understand its limit is 2048G - so that shouldn't be the problem as far as I'm aware?

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wobbly1
Expert
Expert

try the extend command without the -b thick switch firstly.

As a second option and not sure if its an option for you but can you test by creating a lun with the zeroedthick or eagerzeroedthick option rather than just thick and then extend that? If all 3 -b options fail it could be a guest related issue with GFS rather than with ESX

MaDax
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks very much for your help on this, but tried every possible combination and still no luck.

It has nothing to to with GFS, even if I create a new virtual disk with the thick option, and resize it prior to even booting the guest the guest wont boot. It seems using virtual disks in a cluster doesn't accept disks that have been resized.

I'm going to try to contact our local vmware rep and see if he can shed some light on it.

Once again, thanks for your time on this.

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