Use the VI Client to grow a virtual disk
April 24th, 2008 | 
Author: Some of the following text and instructions were copied in part from the post VMware ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 small features guide by Eric Siebert found on searchvmware.techtarget.com.
“Prior to 3.5 you had to use the Service Console vmkfstools command to increase the size of a vmdk file. But now the VI Client can be used to grow virtual disks. Keep in mind that growing a virtual disk only increases the size of the vmdk disk file. It will not automatically increase the size of your OS disk partitions. This must be done manually afterwards. A variety of methods can be used, including OS tools, boot CD’s (e.g. Knoppix) and other utilities.”
Personally I recommend the GParted LiveCD for working with your OS disk partitions. It is an open-source utility similar to Partition Magic that will work on all file systems.
Follow these steps to increase the size of an existing virtual disk with the VI Client:
- Power off the VM
- Edit the Settings for the VM (select the VM in the VI client and choose Edit Settings from the Summary tab, or right click menu lets you edit the settings too)
- Select the virtual disk you want to increase. A new field will be added under Capacity called New Size,
- Enter a new value that is larger then the current value.
- Configure the VM to boot from the GParted LiveCD or the partition tool CD of your choice
- Expand the VM’s disk partition to use all of the new space
- Reboot the VM to it’s normal OS – if it’s a Winodws VM you will have to wait for a chkdsk to finish and another reboot.
Click on the screen shot image to the right to see a larger version.
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