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damiri
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expanding RDM volume under Windows 2008 Std.Ed. x64

Hello,

I have read some of the threads here related to this issue but still unclear what would be best way. My situation is that I actuall expandad my RDM from 500MB to 1TB for file system, but Windows 2008 can't see it. There is nice feature in Win 2008 where you can shrink or expand volume depending on size of your hard drive.

So my question is how to actually make Windows to see that additional space without rebooting file server which is in use 24x7?

Best regards,

damiri

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Craig_Baltzer
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Based on the testing I've done with our lab gear changing the size of a RDM in virtual mode requires a power off/power on cycle of the VM (not the ESX host) before the change in disk size becomes visible to the VM.

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RParker
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There is nice feature in Win 2008 where you can shrink or expand volume depending on size of your hard drive.

I think that applies to a non-boot volume. That's why you make 1 10 G drive (or whatever) to boot from, and enough room to install apps then make a second drive (non-bootable, non-swap) that you want for your data, file sharing, SQL database, whatever that you can expand on the fly...

So it seems this is all one big drive and it's the same drive as the boot C: right? You can't do it while Windows is running you have to reboot to see changes.. Acronis can do it, but one way or the other you have to reboot to complete the expanded drive (if it's the boot drive). Other drives you can do it live.

Craig_Baltzer
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In W2K8 you can definitely extend the system partition on the fly. From Disk Management its Action Rescan Disk to find the additional storage (should show up as "unallocated" on the corresponding disk), then right-click the existing volume on that disk and do an Extend Volume. No need for an outage or a reboot, and no more need for a 3rd party (i.e. Acronis, Partition Magic, etc.) or other "multi-step" processes (add disk to another VM and then run diskpart). This works fine for VMDK file based disks as well as RDMs in physical mode "live" (no reboot required), and RDMs in virtual mode with a power off/power on cycle.

For some reason the size change doesn't seem to get reported into the VM if the RDM is in virtual mode even if you do a Rescan on the ESX host (ESX sees the updated size but doesn't seem to pass it along to running VMs). Powering the VM off and back on will cause the updated size to be passed along to the VM (just rebooting the VM isn't good enough).

I also noticed a litle quirk in the W2K8 UI; the default value that is shown in the "Extend Volume Wizard/Select the amount of space in MB" is often 1MB too large (the value shown for "Selected" is also off by 1MB). This causes the "Next" button to be greyed out and won't let you add the space. Reducing the size by 1MB in the "Select the amount..." box fixes this up and lights up the "Next" button. FYI just in case your "Next" button is greyed out for no apparent reason...

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damiri
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Hello,

thank you for quick reply. RDM is in virtual mode as is recommended by VMWARE. Of course, this is long time practice to separate OS and rest of the system so we can do stuff like this arround. According to this, there is no way to expand RDM volume which is in virtual mode without actually powering VM down and powering it back up ?

damiri

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damiri
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Or you are refering to powedown ESX host ?

Damir

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Craig_Baltzer
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Based on the testing I've done with our lab gear changing the size of a RDM in virtual mode requires a power off/power on cycle of the VM (not the ESX host) before the change in disk size becomes visible to the VM.

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damiri
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Ok, thank you. I will see what would be case here.

Damir

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d_imamovic
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Hello Craig,

it was exaclty as you said. Thank you for your support.

Damir

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