VMFS online grow

[ThorstenT]

Hi,

I just tried to grow a VMFS online.

Resizing the LUN and Rescanning the HBA seems to have worked correctly (I rescanned all hosts, that see that LUN).

Problem is, when I click Increase, I see nothing:

Did I miss something obvious?

TIA,

Thorsten

[AWo]

Increasing the LUN in the backend doesn't do it. You have to present a new LUN where no VMFS partition is on.

VMFS supports spanned volumes. That means the volume can be spanned over many disks/LUN's.

Per disk/LUN only one VMFS partition is supported. As far as I know you can't expand an existing partition on the same disk/LUN.

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009

[ThorstenT]

Hi,

thanks for your answer. Isn't http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/26/resizing-your-vmfs-the-right-way-exploring-the-next-version-... exactly describing the way, I want to resize my volume?

Using different extents for one VMFS is, what I don't want to do.

Regards,

Thorsten

[AWo]

Yes, you're right. I didn't know about that, yet. I never went through that so I only saw free devices in the Extend dialog, yet.

AWo

VCP / vEXPERT 2009

Edited by AWo

[GeorgeMahesh]

I presume that your lun is a shared lun. If it is shared, please make sure if the new size of the lun reflects on all hosts that see the lun. If not, please rescan the HBA on that host that does not reflect the new size of the lun and then try to grow the VMFS again.

[rbanchieri]

Hi,

I have the same problem and can't grow my VMFS volume.

Do you connect your vSphere client to a vCenter Server or directly to an ESX/ESXi host ?

Thank and regards,

Romano

[ThorstenT]

Hi,

I connect via a vCenter server. It is a shared LUN. Last week I opened a service request. Let's see, what they find. I'll probably share here.

Regards,

Thorsten

[byoung111 · Accepted solution]

I had this same problems Saturday night. I extend the lun on my SAN, went to VC, when to the datastore properties, clicked on Increase and nothing showed up. However instead of logging into VirtualCenter, I logged used the VIC to logon to the ESX 4.0 server, and I was able to extend the VMFS volume from there.

[ThorstenT]

Hi.

This worked like a charm. Thanks a lot for the tip.

Regards,

Thorsten