Plan for creating new VM with 3 TB data drive

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We have an old server we're needing to virtualize, and one thing we need is a lot more storage. We have around 3.25 TB available for this machine (250 GB for OS and 3 TB for Data drives), but I'm going around in circles trying to figure out the best approach for this server. It's not feasible to split the data between multiple drives because of the way the files are indexed. I've created one VM with 2 TB drive space (for the OS and Data drives) and added 1.25 TB drive space that I'd like to add to the Data drive, but it doesn't seem possible to add the 1.25 TB without destroying the data on the first 2 TB drive. What is the best approach? Create a single drive for my VM that's 250 GB, and then add in two separate 1.5 TB drives for storage and combine them within Windows?

Thanks for your suggestions.

[blazilla · Accepted solution]

Hi,

unfortunately the maximum virtual disk size for a VM is 2 TB - 512 Byte. In you Case it would be suitable to create two or three seperate virtual disks and combine them (RAID 0 or concatenate disks). Another way (IMHO the besser way) is to create multiple virtual disks and mount them using NTFS mountpoints.

An example:

D:\Data is a folder on a single virtual disks. Create a second virtual disks and create the folder C:\Data\Data2. Instead of assigning a drive letter to the newly created disk, you can mount it into the folder Data2. This gives you the possibility to move the biggest folders onto seperate virtual disks drives without losing you folder structure.

Regards,

Patrick

[Nikhil_Patwa]

Hi,

VMware configuration maximums will provide you with all the details, please go through the link below.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r51/vsphere-51-configuration-maximums.pdf

The maximum VMDK size is 2TB and not more than that, although the host hard disk capacity can be much more than that.

Hope this information is useful

Nikhil