How to resize a virtual machine's hard drives?

[cjohnson596]

Here's the scenario, we just virtualized a physical machine.

The (C:) is 20GB and the (D:) is 190GB.  We had to maintain these sizes during the P2V, so running the P2V again and resizing is not an option (the physical machine is in production and must maintain its drive's current states).

From what I can tell, both the (C:) and (D:) are on one virtual disk (vmdk) which is ~210GB  in size.

Now that we virtualized, I was able to clean up the drives and delete unneeded data.  Now I need to change the (C:) to be 30GB and I need to change the (D:) to be 50GB

Can anyone please office advice?  How do I grow the (C:) and shrink the (D:) while they're both on one virtual disk (vmdk)?

In case it matters, we are using a Left Hand SAN.  Our esx-datastore is 1TB, with plenty of room.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[vmroyale]

Hello.

The easiest way will be to use Converter again.

Good Luck!

[clayinatl]

the easiest way is going to be with converter.  if you use the enterprise version of converter, it will allow you to separate those into 2 new vmdks.  You can also use gparted.  anything you do is going to take some downtime.

[cjohnson596]

Thanks for the quick reply clayin.

So - I had used the standalone converter, which is still installed on this machine.  However I also have converter installed in my vCenter.  Is that what you're suggesting I use?  I will try to figure out how to use it to split the vmdk...

Is gparted a VMware utility?  Downtime is no big deal on this virtual machine, it's not in production yet

[clayinatl]

yes, the last time i used the standalone converter, it would not allow you to separate each volume into a different vmdk, but the enterprise version (which is a plug-in for vcenter) gives you that option.

gparted is an open-source disk management utility.  use it all the time - especially for resizing OS partition in Win 2003.  http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

[cjohnson596]

Awesome - so if I go about slicing and dicing these two partitions using gpart, will my vmdk file remain the same size?  Or will VMware intelligently recognize that now I'm only using 80GB of the vmdk file and release the extra 130GB back into my SAN's LUN?

Im worried if I start using gpart that I'll get into trouble with managing my data stores as VMware might not keep up with those changes... does that make sense?

[DSTAVERT]

Use Converter. It is easy to resize. If you make a disk smaller it will create a new blank VMDK and copy the files to the new disk. Defragmented for free.

[cjohnson596]

Follow up question to this: I assume you mean Converter Enterprise, like clayin has suggested, right?  I dont see any such feature or set of options in the standalone converter.

Is there a way to tell if the vCenter Converter listed in my plugins in this screenshot the correct Converter to do this task?  And how (or where are instructions) for running this re-conversion on my virtual machine to manage the (C:) & (D:), and just to reitterate, I will be able to grow one drive while shrinking the other?

[clayinatl]

yes, if it's a plug-in, it's enterprise.  you can still resize them with the standalone but can't separate out into new vmdks in case this comes up again.

[cjohnson596]

I really appreciate your time answering my questions, I have one last (really silly) question.

Where/how do I launch the Converter plug-in from vCenter?

The only way I've found to do it so far was on the list of physical machines that I'd been analyzing with Guided Consolidation, which won't work in this case as it's a virtual machine I need to 'convert'

Thanks again

[clayinatl · Accepted solution]

highlight the host you want to convert it to (could be the cluster), then right click and select "import machine".  it will then launch converter.  you can do it while on by selecting "Powered on machine" or if you power it down first, you can import it as a virtual by specifying the host / virtual center.

[cjohnson596]

Brilliant, we'll give it a go - domo arigato