Extending a vmdk on a replicated VM

[Dec117]

Hi,

I am replicating VMs from a vSphere 6.5 environment using standard VMFS datastores to a vSphere 7.01 vSAN environment.

vSphere replication is version 8.3. and SRM is version 8.4.

We need to extend the VMDKs on a number of VM's. I have found a number of KB's and articles explaining how to do this by manually extending the VMDK at each side via the cli when using VMFS datastores at both sites. 

But how do I extend the vmdk at the target site when it is using vSAN as opposed to VMFS datastores? 

Any help will be appricated.

D

[ashilkrishnan]

Hi @Dec117 ,

Upgrading vsphere to 7.0 would make things easier in near future.  Since this is on 6.5, it's a bit complicated when using vSAN.

If the concern is related to renaming folders before at target site before stopping replication, you can refer --> https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2145551 

Additionally, you can try the force stop replication procedure provided here -->

https://www.virtuallysensei.com/re-configure-vsphere-rep-existing-seeds-vsan/ 

Hope that helps.

[Dec117]

Hi ashilkrishnan,

Thanks for responding, it is much appreciated.

I am aware that Upgrading to 7.0 would make thigs easier however this is not an option, the purpose of the replication at this time is to move of the old 6.5 environment to the 7.0 environment at a new location.

Replication has been configured for all VM's at the source site and will continue until they have been failed over to the new site. At this point a new replication will be configured to go to another, new,  7.0 DR environment.

The issue I have is that in the mean time some VM's will need to have disk size increased. As the target site is vSAN I was wondering what the procedure is for this?

I am aware that you can manually extent the disks at both source and target via the CLi when both use VMFS datastores but not sure how to do this when the source is VMFS and the target is vSAN.

When testing I have been able to stop replication and NOT retain the target disks, change the size of the source disk and then recreate the replication. The problem doing this is that I am replicating the VM from scratch again, which can take a considerable time in some cases.

Is this the only way to extend a disk on a vm which is being replicated when the target datastore is vSAN?

Thanks again for your response,

D