Extending datastore

[dmaunder]

I have a ESXI 5.0 host on a HP ML350G6. ESXi boots off an SD card. It previously had a RAID-1 array with 2 x 300GB SAS disks. I have added another 2 idential disks, and converted the array to a 558GB RAID-10 array using HP Array manager.

ESXi sees the additional space correctly in Configuration / Storage Adaptors (now shows total size as 558GB instead of 274GB)

In Datastore properties, it shows total capacity in top left corner as 274GB, and the Device in bottom right corner as SAS Disk 558GB. (See attached screen shot)

The previous RAID-1 array had a single data store added taking up the entire drive, it had not been extended etc.

When I click on Increase in the Datastore properties, no free space is shown. Same thing if I attempt to create a new datastore. How do I get the extra space added into the datastore without backing up the VMs and deleting the datastore and recreating it? It is a single host site, so I cant move them to a different host.

[a_p_]

Are you sure you are booting off the SD card? The partition layout looks like the Hypervisor is installed on the disk!?

Anyway, please take a look at Can't increase Datastore capacity VMFS 5.54 where I discussed how to manually increase the local datastore with ESXi 5.

André

[dmaunder]

Well I certainly thought I was booting of the SD Card, but I was surprised by how many partitions there were on there as well. Would that have made a difference to being able to extend it?

I will give it a go using the command line methods.

Regards

Daryl Maunder

[a_p_]

Would that have made a difference to being able to extend it?

It looks like the GUI only offers (supports) growing a VMFS datastore if this is the only partition on a disk/LUN. With the installation on the SD card and only the VMFS datastore on the disk this should have worked.

André

[rickardnobel]

dmaunder wrote:

Well I certainly thought I was booting of the SD Card, but I was surprised by how many partitions there were on there as well.

Are you really sure that you are booting from the SD card? Try to remove it and start the server and see if it still works. As noted above, this is the partition layout of ESXi, and the 4 GB partition ("scratch") is only created when ESXi is installed on hard disk.

[dmaunder]

Should I be able to see the SD card from vsphere client, and see what partitions are on it?

Regards

Daryl Maunder

Technical Director

Message was edited by: a.p. - removed personal data (phone, email, ...)

[rickardnobel]

You could log in through the ESXi Shell and run this command:

df -h

Watch for a 4.0 GB vfat partition, it should not be there if booting from SD Card / USB.