Expanding/growing a VMFS datastore
It is likely that you run out of free space on a VMFS volume over time, as you end up deploying more and more VMs on it. Fortunately, accommodating additional free space on a VMFS volume is possible. But this requires that the LUN either has free space left on it or has been expanded.
In this section, we will learn how to increase the size of a VMFS volume on a LUN that has been expanded or already has RAW free space on it.
How to do it...
We can expand a VMFS datastore by using the following two methods:
Using the Increase Datastore Capacity wizard
Using
vmkfstools
Before attempting to grow the VMFS datastore, issue a rescan on the HBAs to make sure that the ESXi sees the increased size of the LUN.
Make a note of the NAA ID, LUN number, and size of the LUN backing the VMFS datastore that you are trying to expand/grow.
Using the Increase Datastore Capacity wizard
We will go through the following process to expand an existing VMFS datastore:
Use the vSphere Web Client...