How do I expand VMDK?

[Devan10]

I have a Dell Powervault MD3000i providing storage to an ESX 3.5 Server and a Windows 2008 Server (acting as a file server) on the ESX server. The 2008 server is getting full so I bought a new drive for the MD3000i to expand the capicity of the data drive on the 2008 server. I followed this guide:

http://jacobackerman.blogspot.com/2009/06/dell-md-3000i-expandng-virtual-disk.html

So now the disks (multiple physical disks merged into one virtual disk) on the MD300i show a total size of 1.36 TB, however the 2008 server is only showing 1 TB of space on the data drive, it is not recognizing the new 300gb space. After some research and asking around on other forums I've learned that I need to expand the VMDK file to the new size (1.36 TB) then use windows diskpart to extend the drive. I tried to follow this tutorial:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/15593 (the 2nd post in particular)

but I don't know the disk name or the fs name. I've looked on the VMware infrastructure client under the virtual machine's settings and found3 hard disks. The first one is a virtual disk 60 GB in size, this one is the Windows operating system, the second one is theone I am interested in. It is a mapped Raw LUN with these properties:

Physical LUN and database mapping file:

vmhba32:0:0:0

DC02/DC02_2.vmdk

Virtual Device Node:

SCSI (0:1) Hard Disk 2

How would I expand the vmdk to see the new space?

[Devan10]

I'm not sure why this line:

OS DC02/DC02_2.vmdk appeared as a hyperlink. It should be square brackets aroound the OS.

[mediawide · Accepted solution]

Hi Devan,

Please Follow below

Instruction.

1.
Right Click on Data storage



2.
Click on Properties



3.
There you can get Option to Add Data storage, Increase

or Extend.

If this problem is not resolve d please post again with

error.

Thanks

Durgesh

[MauroBonder]

extend to size desired and in windows you run diskpart to extend. Diskpart in w2k8 is installed in simple installation how standard.

maybe helpful

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100726...

*If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful"*

[Devan10]

sorry if this is a dumb question, but where is the Data Storage?

[mediawide]

Login to VI client or Vcenter Client . Click on Configuration tab then Select Storage.

Thanks

Durgesh

[Devan10]

Oh, nevermind. The 2008 server went down (an unrelated issue, a power outage infact) and when it came back up the 2008 server saw the new space as unallocated, so I just had to extend the existing hdd. I guess the server just needed a reboot.

[mediawide]

That's gr8t, some time it's Happend with only Microsoft.... lol

alot's of the issue automatice resoolve just need to reboot a OS. thanks

Thanks

Durgesh