Increase the size of virtual disk in Vmware EXSI

Recently, One of my virtual machine disk space was full due to different logs and files. I had to increase the space to run the system smoothly. I have documented briefly that I found from Vmware KB. Please have a look:

For ESX 3.5 or later:
  1. Open VMware Infrastructure (VI) Client and connect to VirtualCenter or the ESX host.
  2. Right-click the virtual machine.
  3. Click Edit Settings.
  4. Select Virtual Disk.
  5. Increase the size of the disk.Note: If this option is greyed out, the disk may be running on snapshots or the disk may be at the maximum allowed size depending on the block size of the datastore.

Extending a virtual disk only extends a virtual machine’s disk. This does not automatically increase the size of the file system (such as NTFS for Windows and ext3 for Linux) within the guest. The virtual disk may have unallocated space that you now want to use. You may also have increased the size of a virtual machine’s virtual disk but are unable to see the new space from the virtual machine’s operating system.

Extending a Linux guest file system

If the Linux virtual machine has an ext3 file system under the control of Logical Volume Manager (LVM) control then there are LVM tools to allow the file system to be extended.

If you are running a file system other then ext3, you may need to research an alternative way of accomplishing this. Reiser has its own tool for accomplishing this, GParted Live CD is another popular tool for this.

To extend the logical volume:Note: These steps only apply to EXT3 file systems.

Caution: VMware recommends having a complete backup of the virtual machine prior making these changes.
  1. Power off the virtual machine.
  2. Edit the virtual machine settings and extend the virtual disk size.
  3. Power on the virtual machine.
  4. Identify the device name, which is by default /dev/sda, and confirm the new size by running the command: 

    # fdisk -l 

  5. Create a new primary partition:
    1. Run the command: 

      # fdisk /dev/sda (depending the results of the step 4)

    2. Press p to print the partition table to identify the number of partitions. By default there are 2: sda1 and sda2.
    3. Press n to create a new primary partition. 
    4. Press p for primary.
    5. Press 3 for the partition number, depending the output of the partition table print.
    6. Press Enter two times.
    7. Press t to change the system’s partition ID
    8. Press 3 to select the newly creation partition
    9. Type 8e to change the Hex Code of the partition for Linux LVM
    10. Press w to write the changes to the partition table. 
  6. Restart the virtual machine.
  7. Run this command to verify that the changes were saved to the partition table and that the new partition has an 8e type:

    # fdisk -l     

  8. Run this command to convert the new partition to a physical volume:Note: The number for the sda can change depending on system setup. Use the sda number that was created in step 5.

    # pvcreate /dev/sda3

  9. Run this command to extend the physical volume:# vgextend VG-System /dev/sda3

    Note: To determine which volume group to extend, use the command vgdisplay.

  10. Run this command to verify how many physical extents are available to the Volume Group: 

    # vgdisplay VG-System | grep “Free” 

  11. Run the following command to extend the Logical Volume:# lvextend -L+#G /dev/mapper/VG-System-root

    Where # is the number of Free space in GB available as per the previous command. Use the full number output from Step 10 including any decimals.

    Note: to determine which logical volume to extend, use the command lvdisplay.

  12. Run the following command to expand the ext3 filesystem online, inside of the Logical Volume:

    # resize2fs /dev/mapper/VG-System-root     

  13. Run the following command to verify that the / filesystem has the new space available:

    # df -h /

Source: kb.vmware.com

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