Increasing the size of our datastores
Sometimes, no matter how many unwanted files or snapshots we remove, or how many swap files we manipulate, we simply cannot free up enough space on our datastores. At this point, the only option we have is to extend the VMFS datastore. vSphere has a couple of ways that can increase the size of our datastores. These include growing the existing datastore onto adjacent space or extending the datastore into additional LUNs. Although both techniques result in higher capacity, the processes and benefits differ and are explained in the next section.
Growing a VMFS datastore
As of vSphere 4.0, we have the ability to grow our VMFS volumes into adjacent free space in order to increase their capacity. In order to grow our volumes, we must first ensure that there is free space available on the LUN hosting the datastore. Typically, a vSphere administrator would format all available space on the LUN as a VMFS partition when it is presented to the ESXi host. This means...
