can you expand an array that holds the vmfs datastore?

[Wally-vmware]

Hello,

I have an ESX 3.02 host running on an HP DL380 G4 server with a smart array 6i controller. This server has two drives mirrored for the ESX OS and three drives in a raid 5 for the vmfs datastore. I would like to add another drive and expand the raid 5 with the HP Array Config utility. If I do this will the host see the larger datastore when expanded? I have done this on Windows 2003 servers and you have to run the diskpart utility to make the windows partition see the new space with no downtime. Just not sure how ESX will see it.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Yes, that is possible but you will have to extend the VMFS with

vmkfstools -X

look at this:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/15593;jsessionid=CFC980E4E7D82E4482F48EBF990DBF5B?tstart=0&star...

Gerrit

[mike_laspina · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can not expand a VMFS volume by adding an additional disk in this manner it is not dynamic. You can only add an extent to a VMFS partition.

If you add this disk to the array will have additional space in the array but you would have to do partition surgery to fix it, this is a bad thing.

If you are in a real fix you could add the disk as a single drive and use it for swap files.

Unfortunately the best way to do this is a complete backup of the VMFS volume and then recreate the array as 4 drives.

Restore the volume and re-register all the VM's.

[Wally-vmware]

Yea, thats what I was thinking, sure is easy to do for Windows OS. I have another drive shelf so I'll see if I can connect it, create another datastore and cold migrate my VMs.

Thanks!

[ac57846]

Wally,

You can increase the size of a VMFS datastore.

First add the disk & use the array config tool to expand the array and logical disk

When the expation completes use the VI client to Rescan the storage adapters. You should now see a larger LUN.

Open the properties of the VMFS and add an extent, you will be offered the free space on the LUN.

It is also doable from the commandline, but it isn't so easy to describe.

A VMFS datastore can conain 32 extents (partitions), each extent can be up to 2TB in size. A VMFS can be made up of multiple partitions on a single LUN.

Al.

[mike_laspina]

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/133948