Noob alert!

[pshearduk]

Good afternoon,

I hope someone can help me, the scenario is..

VI3 server, small 3TB SAN attatched, created a 40GB VM, powered it off to add a 350GB disk, Virtual centre does not allow this and I get a smaller sized disk suggested, there is just over 1.6TB free on the SAN Datastore.... what am I doing wrong?

thank you all in advance if you can help

regards

Paul

[ORRuss]

This is the vmfs block size. If the block size it 1MB, the largest disk file you can create is 250GB. Create a new vmfs volume with a 2MB block size and you can create your disk. (up to 512GB, I beleive).

orRuss

[pshearduk]

Is converting the VMFS to 2MB an easy thing to do ?

Thanks for your swift earlier reply

Paul

[ORRuss]

Not possible, as far as I know. You'd need to create a new one with the new block size. Then, if you want to keep your OS disk and the new disk together, you have to migrate the OS disk over to the new LUN and create the new disk there.

I keep a 2MB bs LUN (about 1.5 TB) for database servers. Otherwise, I think you'll get better efficiency out of 1MB bs volumes.

orRuss

[pshearduk]

Thanks for that insight ORRuss, unfortunately my company purchased the VI3 kit before my VI3 4 day course (29th May), I've skimmed the VI3 documentation which came with the media but obviously missed that little nuggett of information. Many thanks..

Can I ask one last thing, When I create the disk's and then in SVR 2003 create the disk to use this new disk... could I create a dynamic disk and then grow this disk on to additional hard disks created in VC ?

hope that makes sense

cheers

Paul

[ORRuss]

Never done that myself, but I'd be surprised if it was not possible.

Sounds like, though, that you would want to grow the vmdk itself. With vmkfstools. If you suspect that you'll need a disk larger than 512GB, you can create the vmfs volume with a 4MB or 8MB block size, too. That allows you 1024GB and 2048GB disk sizes, respectively.

orRuss