How can I safely expand the vdisk that my vCenter server sits on?

[jobee1]

Hey all, I'm a fairly recent convert to VMware and I'm really liking what it has to offer. I'm still learning about it even after my one week class a month ago. My current dilemma is that my vCenter server is a VM sitting on a 120GB vdisk but when I go to the Summary page for this VM the Storage Usage is 124.17GB. I was going to shut vCenter down and use the vSphere Client software to increase the disk size but I was afraid that would that impact my running VMs? I tried Googling this and couldn't find anything definitive either way. So, can I safely shut down vCenter and increase its disk size this way? If not what is the preferred way of increasing disk size?

Thanks,

Joe B

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Assuming this is a Windows VM (vCenter Server is also available as a Linux based appliance) you don't need to shut down the guest OS. Simply resize the VM's virtual disk in the VM's settings, and then increase the partition size within the guest's Disk Manager.

Btw. the 124GB used disk space takes the VM's swap files as well as some configuration files into account.

André

[jobee1]

Oh good! And thanks for the info on the swap files and such.

Thanks,

Joe B

[jobee1]

Thanks a.p. I just changed the settings in the VM's settings like you said and when I went to the Disk Manager the resize was already reflected in the disk size.

Thanks again,

Joe B