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Sherilj
Contributor
Contributor

How to expand Storage for VMware volume ?

Hi,

I am having ESX 3.5 installed on 5 IBM HS21 blade and configured IBM DS 4700 storage. Two volumes are connected to this farm. Due to disk space issue I need to expand one of these volumes. The same is happening at storage level, but it is not happening at VMware. Is there any way to expand the storage in VMware?

Sheril

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Steve_Tron
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

You can add extra extents to a vmfs data store to expand the total size

Regards

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Sherilj
Contributor
Contributor

HI,

What is the procedure to add the additional space to storage?

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Steve_Tron
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

This should help

Regards

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Sherilj
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

As per this document I will lose the data. Is there any other method so that I can protect the data?

Sheril

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Steve_Tron
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

You only will lose the data on the disk being added if it was formated before not on the original disk. So if you add a new lun to your exisiting vmfs lun you will not lose any data at all. If the lun you wish to add has data on it I would copy it off before hand. For this you could if you didnt have enough spare capacity on the san use an NFS data store created on a Windows box with the NFS service, slow but it would work.

Regards

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

Adding extent is simple if you have a new disk/LUN.

Is not so simple (you have to do from command line) if you have a new partition in existing disk.

Remember also that if you loose a membert of the "extent" you will loose your data.

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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Steve_Tron
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

You will only lose all data if you lose the first extent, otherwise you will only lose the vm's/data stored in the extent affected, vm's that do not contain data in the affected extent will continue to operate.

Regards

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

Two volumes are connected to this farm. Due to disk space issue I need to expand one of these volumes. The same is happening at storage level, but it is not happening at VMware. Is there any way to expand the storage in VMware?

In this particular case you have to use command line.

Or split again the two volumes at storage level.

Cause VIC doesn't permit to extent a VMFS with contiguous free space.

OR you can upgrade to VS4 and use exten_d_.

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro