James Clements explains how to resize your VMware ESXi/ESX/vSphere disks.
You can resize the disks live when using ESXi/ESX/vShere 4 and up.
When using Windows Vista or 2008 and up, you don’t need special tools for resizing the partitions on those disks: the built-in disk manager can do it.
When using Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP or less, then you need the EXTPART tool from Dell as explained by GeekSeat:
All you need to do now is provision the extra space to the VM, then run the tool at the command line and follow the wizard:
C:\>extpart.exe
ExtPart - Utility to extend basic disks (Build 1.0.4)
(c) Dell Computer Corporation 2003
.
Volume to extend (drive letter or mount point): c:
Current volume size : 66285 MB (69504860160 bytes)
Current partition size : 76285 MB (79990815744 bytes)
Size to expand the volume (MB): 76285that’s it – job done . . zero downtime (watch out of course . . this works differently if you have a clustered disk to extend – see: http://geekseat.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/replacing-clustered-storage-for-a-sql-cluster-emc-ce-ms-clustering/ )
Note the “Size to expand” is actually the number of MB you are adding to the volume as Redelijkheid explains.
Sometimes you need to do this in multiple steps as diskmgmt.msc does not always give the free partition space in megabytes.
There is no need to reboot after expanding using ExtPart.
Edit: 20111222; you can download ExtPart through the DELL web-site; there are also direct http downloads of the EXE and README, and direct ftp downloads for the EXE and README.
If you don’t trust ExtPart, there is always the GParted way as explained by BleepingComputer.com.
–jeroen
via:
- JJClements.co.uk » VMware ESX vSphere resize disk.
- Extend System Partition on a Windows Server 2003 VM using Dell ExtPart.
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