Increase disk size and guest partition w/o shutting down

[SppFCTS]

Good day,

I think that you can do this but I just want to make sure...

I have a Windows Server 2008 R2 guest configured with two partitionsOS partition on C: and an application partition on 😧each of which point to entirely separate virtual disk files. I want to expand the 😧 disk and partition without shutting down the server. I think that I can add to the size of the virtual disk associated with 😧 via the guest's properties without shutting down the server. Then from the Windows disk management I can expand the partition size associated with 😧 without shutting down the server because the guest OS has been isolated to C:

Is this the case?

[richardsonporto]

You can do it man, even on OS partition 🙂

[abhilashhb · Accepted solution]

Yes you will be able to do it on the fly. Windows server 2008 onwards also supports extending the OS drive.

There is a very good KB Article which will help you with that

VMware KB: Increasing the size of a disk partition

[SppFCTS]

I read the KB article. Then I read it again because It seemed too good to be true! Has anybody actually tried this (successfully extend the virtual disk that the system file system is located on and extend the system file system itself, all without rebooting the server)?

[abhilashhb]

I have personal done it more than 10 times. It works. Make sure you have space on the datastore where the vmdk is residing.