Expanding data disk in vmware esx server 3

[TobiasM]

Hi, I have been asked by a colleague if I can be of assistance to expand d: \ drive on an existing virtual windows 2003 server.

They use:

VMware ESX Server 3i Version 3.5.0 Build 110271

VMware Infrastructure Client Version 2.5.0 Build 119826

Is it possible to extend the disk in vSphere clienten, begin by clicking on the edit \ disk and then expand the *.wmdk file from 25GB to 40gb? After that logging into the server and extend the disk using some better disk expanding program.

/T.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Yes this should even work with the VM powered on. After expanding the virtual disk in the GUI, connect to the Windows 2003 VM (either open the console or via an administrative RDP session) and rescan the storage in the Disk Management. Assuming the data disk has either only a single partition or is the last partition on the disk and does not have the pagefile/swapfile on it, you may even be able to extend the disk space using the diskpart command line utility.

André

[vmroyale]

Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware ESXi™ 4 to Virtual Machine & Guest OS

Yes, as long as the disk is SCSI and there are no snapshots on the VM. Use diskpart in Windows to grow the NTFS partition.

[TobiasM]

Thanks, it went very smoothly. I came across

Dell's Extpart to expand disks that were very easy

to use ex. # extpart d: 1024

/T