Problem growing VMDK's to over 1TB

[rhnb]

Running ESX3.5u5

I have a SAN volume of 2TB's. (NFS mounted)

If I create a VMDK of say 100GB on that volume, and grow it to 1023GB all is fine.

If I try to grow that 100GB to say 1100GB, then although it shows as 'Completed', when I look at the disk size, it's still the original size (100GB).

Oddly- If I create the VMDK initially at say 1024GB, then I can happily grow that to anything I like (up to 2TB).

Anyone else seen this and know if there's a workaround? I didn't really want to create the volume at over 1TB to start with, but grow it over time. However, it looks like I may have to if I 'know' at some stage in the future I want a VMDK > 1TB.

Cheeers... Allan.

[weinstein5]

What block size does the VMFS datastore have? It sounds like it is at 4 MB which will cap the size of the VMDK to 1 TB - it will need to be set to 8 MB to allow for VMDK's to be larger than 1024 MB -

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[rhnb]

I'll check that but how does that explain the fact that if I create the VMDK 'initially' at over 1TB (which I can), I can then increase it without problem?

It seems that it' only if I create the initial VMDK at under 1TB that I hit this cap of 1TB for expansion.

[PaulSvirin]

Does the same procedure via the commandline give you the same result?

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iSCSI SAN software

[rhnb]

Thats the next thing I'm going to try - once I can work out the correct command

[TomHowarth]

So can we confirm that you are doing the action against the same datastores

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[rhnb]

OK - some progress (well I'm happier now)

Looks like it might be a 'bug' in Virtual Center?

Here's what I did and this worked...

Created a 2TB SAN volume (presented to the ESX host via NFS)

Added a hard disk to a VM on that volume and sized it at 1100GB

Confirmed - it wouldnt expand using VC (no error - just still shows as 1100GB)

Used the command line to expand it...

vmkfstools -X 1250G /vmfs/volumes/mysanvol/myvm/myvm.vmdk

'ls -l' showed the new size

Went onto the VM and created a partition in that VMDK of 1250G and all OK.

The only problem is that in VC, the disk still shows as 1100GB (as initially created) but I can live with that.

Thanks for all suggestions etc.