Increasing a vmfs3 volume on ESX 3.0.1

[zalazar]

On my ESX 3.0.1 servers I like to increase a few vmfs3 volumes.

I can extend the volumes on my HP SAN but then I just have some extra space that I can't assign to the vmfs volume.

There is of course the option to use extents but I don't think this is recommended. Why is this actually not possible. For a long time we have LVM and even Windows (NTFS) is capable of online extend or now even shrink the volume.

Partition magic is there for ages and VMware designs a new file system that is already in it's third version and still don't have this option.

I think this is very disappointing for an enterprise product.

Isn't there a workaround e.g. via parted to get this volume extended without having to re-create it.

[TomHowarth]

in a word NO. as you have already stated the only option is extents. but that is not really a option is it.

if you have the space migrate the VMDK's of the LUN trash the patition and recreate it then migrate them back.

[zalazar]

Thanks for your response Tom. I will just re-create it then.

Hopefully it's possible in vmfs4.