Extending a Disk Partition after extending a Virtual Disk.

[IT538332]

Hi,

I have a Virtual Server that has two Virtual Disks (Disk 0 & DISK 1).  Disk 0 contains the system disk and that is the only partition.  Disk 1 is 80 GB and in the OS shows 4 partitions E, F, G & H for arguments sake.  I have a request to extend one of the partitions by 20 GB.  Extending the disk is no issue, as I have the SAN storage and the OS is 2008, so this can be done on the fly.  Both Disks are Basis disks in the OS.  My question is when I add the extra storage to Disk 1 can I simply extend the partition I want the extra space on, or do I have to make Disk 1 dynamic prior to this?

I appreciate it's a bit of an OS query more than VMWARE.

Thanks J

[MKguy]

Disk 1 is 80 GB and in the OS shows 4 partitions E, F, G & H for arguments sake.  I have a request to extend one of the partitions by 20 GB.

That's a bit of a problem. You can extend the last partition of the disk online just fine by consuming the adjacent new disk blocks, but you can't extend any of the other partitions like this. This is why I would adhere to a strict 1 disk, 1 partition scheme.

My question is when I add the extra storage to Disk 1 can I simply extend the partition I want the extra space on, or do I have to make Disk 1 dynamic prior to this?

It works with basic disks, you don't need to convert them to dynamic.

[IT538332]

Thanks for the response MKguy.  I managed to get access to a test VM and tested this out.  It looks like it can be done, but the disk shows an extra partition even though it is labelled the same as the one I extended

For example see below

This is the view I have in Disk manager when I view the current disks prior to extending the LUN

Partition1	Partition 2	Partition 3	Partition 4
Data G: 40GB	Temp H: 20GB	Logs I: 10GB	Apps E: 10GB

The view below is what I see in Disk manager once the LUN as been extended and the 1st partition has been extended.

Partition 1	Partition 2	Partition 3	Partition 4	Partition 5
Data G: 40GB	Temp H: 20GB	Logs I: 10GB	Apps E: 10GB	Data G: 20GB

It's not ideal, but when I look at the properties of the disk drive in My computer I can see that my 😧 drive has a new disk size of 60GB, which is what I need.  The disks did have to be converted to dynamic, which isn't an issue, but I'm not sure if this will have any further knock on effects down the line.

Thanks again,

J