Unable to edit (expand) VM Hard Disk

[clum2]

I've inherited an ESXi environment, and one of my pressing issues is the 2012R2 VM that has vCenter 6.0 installed on it; the HDD is filling up. I've managed to clear some old user profiles from it so it's got a bit of headroom for now, but I'm unable to increase the space in Web client or vSphere Client - Disk Provisioning is greyed out in each.

As a workaround, I figured I'd be able to move the logs to another drive on that VM so followed the instructions here but, even after a restart, the bulk of logs are still in (and being written to) C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\logs with just vpxd-alert-2.log in the new location.

Ideally, I'd like to shift the logs off the system drive rather than just add resource, though I'd be keen to know why I can't increase the HDD size. Any ideas please?

[kashifkarar01]

Since you have added a new disk change the logs to that new partition:

Open “vpxd.cfg” and add the following line in between <log> and </log>

<directory>D:\VMware\Logs</directory>

Changing the amount of log files stored and the size is also pretty basic, in this example vCenter will store 10 logfiles which are max 10MB each:

<maxFileSize>10485760</maxFileSize> <maxFileNum>10</maxFileNum>

Keep in mind that you will need to restart the vCenter Service after these changes

Regards,

Kashif

[clum2]

Hi Kashif,

thanks for getting back to me; that's the process I actually followed, editing c:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\vmware-vpx\vpxd.cfg with the new location, but the only log files written there (after a full server restart) are vpxd-alert-2.log and vpxd-alert-2.log.gz.

Is that definitely the correct location for vpxd.cfg?

[cyberpaul]

Hi,

the reason why you cannot increase virtual disk size are probably existing snapshots. You should check and remove them all using snapshot manager.

If there are none, there may be some redo logs left, try to consolidate them using Snapshot -> Consolidate.

[clum2]

Hi cyberpaul,

Thanks for taking a look in; there's no snapshots and the Consolidate option is greyed out so I guess there's never been any?

Calum

[Mparayil]

Looks like the Virtual machine is pointing to Snapshot disk. some time you will not be able to find the the Snapshot details on the Snapshot Manger. you can verify this by following below  method :-

Edit settings view without a Snapshot :-

you see the Option for increase the disk is available

Edit settings view witha Snapshot :-

you see the Option for increase the disk is  Not available and grade-out :-

you will find the Disk name with 000001.vmdk OR 000000x  "X" Indicates the number of Snapshot, below example is for 1 snapshot

if you are not able to see the Snapshot on the Manger take a Test snapshot and perform a Delete all operation.

[clum2]

Hi Mparayil,

I think you may be on to something; the disk name ends -000001.vmdk as you say. When I go into Snapshot Manager, it appears to be running on one called "pre hardware update" (I assume that's what the green "play" icon means). When I hit Delete All, the following warning is shown:

I take it that it's safe fro me to do this?

thanks

Calum

[cyberpaul]

Hi Calum, that's it. It should be safe to do, even though it may take some time and slightly decrease IO performance during the operation.

You should definitely do it. It is not recommended to keep snapshots for a long time, they grow in size over time and negatively impact performance.

Regards, Pavel

[clum2]

Hi Pavel, Mparayil,

That sorted the issue with the drive resizing, many thanks for your help.

Calum