Expanding a datastore

[mwdavies99]

Hi,

I'm trying to expand the size my existing datastore. I have an HP Proliant DL370 G6 with a Smart Array P410i. I've added 4 addtional drives and expanded the Array through HP Array Config Utility, so all drives are added to the raid and in vSphere 4.1 it does show as having the 'new' capacity of 1.9TB.

The problem is, when I go into vSphere under Configuration, Storage it shows the 'Total Capacity' as 833GB (the original capacity when it was first created). When I look under the 'Extent Device' box, it shows the 'new' Capacity of 1.91TB.  (see attached pic)

If I click on the 'Increase' button it starts up the 'Extent Device' wizard, but i get nothing that shows up in my list and i cannot hit next to continue the wizard. I assumed this would be where i can specify the new chunk of storage i have added to expand the datastore but nothing shows up so I'm at a loss. Any thoughts?

Here is a shot of the Extent Device wizard

Thanks.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

increasing the VMFS partition on the installation disk is not possible using the GUI. For a walk-through take a look at http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/how-to-increase-the-size-of-a-local-datastore-on-an-esxi...

Caution: Make sure you select the VMFS partition when doing this. In the example it's partition 2, but it might be partition 3 with your installation!

Although this should work without issues, I strongly recommend you backup the existing VM's prior to doing this.

André

[mwdavies99]

Thanks for the reply Andre. I was able to resolve the issue, not quite as I had hoped but it worked none the less.

I was able to go through the TSM and had to delete the existing partition with the datastore and then recreate it (per the link), however, when I recreate the partition I lost the datastore. There was a warning in the article that this could happen and in our case, it did. I was able to restore the VMs to the new datastore so it was no real loss other than time.

I guess for future I'd like to know if there is a process that exists that allows you to expand the datastore through the GUI. We'll be setting up more VMs and from this lesson will be sizing it a little bigger to avoid this but would still be nice to have that ability without thr risk of losing the datastore and having to restore from a backup.

thanks again.

-Marc

[a_p_]

Sorry to hear you lost the datastore. I did this a couple of times and it always worked. Anyway, if you plan to increase the local disks/RAID set, I'd recommend you use the ACU (Array Configuration Utility from the SmartStart CD) to configure the RAID. With the ACU you can split the RAID into several logical volumes which are presented to the OS as separate disks. Create a small logical volume (e.g. 10GB) for ESXi and larger ones for the datastores. This way you can use the GUI to grow the datastore, since it is on a separate disk.

This will also allow you to have a RAID set larger than 2TB if the logical volumes are smaller then the maximum supported LUN size (2TB minus 512 bytes)

André

[mwdavies99]

That's extremely helpful. We've got a new host on order and will plan on using this setup for the next. Thanks again for the advice.