Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 344 Location: Maysville, KY
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:59 am Post subject: howto increase disk size of a vmware virtual disk
I use vmware for testing and setting up various types of system configurations (pen testing, etc) and one thing I need to be able to do quickly is to resize vmware workstation disks.
An easy way to resize a vmware workstation virtual disk is using the vmware-vdiskmanager program.
Here is an example of increasing disk size from 750mb to 1.5GB on a Windows 2000 virtual disk:
Code:
ewiget@laptop ~/vmware-clients/Windows 2000 Professional $ vmware-vdiskmanager -x 1.5GB Windows*.vmdk
Using log file /tmp/vmware-ewiget/vdiskmanager.log
Grow: 100% done.
The old geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 512/128/32
The new geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 768/128/32
Disk expansion completed successfully.
Here are all of the options for vmware-vdiskmanager:
Code:
ewiget@laptop ~/vmware-clients/Windows 2000 Professional $ vmware-vdiskmanager
VMware Virtual Disk Manager - build 8848.
Usage: vmware-vdiskmanager OPTIONS diskName
Offline disk manipulation utility
Options:
-c : create disk; need to specify other create options
-d : defragment the specified virtual disk
-q : do not log messages
-r <source-disk> : convert the specified disk; need to specify
destination disk-type
-x <new-capacity> : expand the disk to the specified capacity
Additional options for create and convert:
-a <adapter> : adapter type (ide, buslogic or lsilogic)
-s <size> : capacity of the virtual disk
-t <disk-type> : disk type id
Disk types:
0 : single growable virtual disk
1 : growable virtual disk split in 2Gb files
2 : preallocated virtual disk
3 : preallocated virtual disk split in 2Gb files
The capacity can be specified in sectors, Kb, Mb or Gb.
The acceptable ranges:
ide adapter : [100.0Mb, 128.0Gb]
scsi adapter: [100.0Mb, 256.0Gb]
ex 1: vmware-vdiskmanager -c -s 850Mb -a ide -t 0 myIdeDisk.vmdk
ex 2: vmware-vdiskmanager -d myDisk.vmdk
ex 3: vmware-vdiskmanager -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 0 destinationDisk.vmdk
ex 4: vmware-vdiskmanager -x 36Gb myDisk.vmdk
Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 10:47 am Post subject: VMWare ESX Server
Widget,
I am new to ESX Server and have a question since you seem to be knowledgeable about VMWare. I need to split my VMWare 5.0 Legacy session of Windows 2003 I created from 2.5gb to 2 or 3 smaller files to copy to my ESX Server via WinSCP. Can you help with what VMWare-VDiskManager commands I need to use to accomplish this?
Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 344 Location: Maysville, KY
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 12:54 am Post subject: Re: VMWare ESX Server
bobk63 wrote:
Widget,
I am new to ESX Server and have a question since you seem to be knowledgeable about VMWare. I need to split my VMWare 5.0 Legacy session of Windows 2003 I created from 2.5gb to 2 or 3 smaller files to copy to my ESX Server via WinSCP. Can you help with what VMWare-VDiskManager commands I need to use to accomplish this?
Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 344 Location: Maysville, KY
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:00 am Post subject: Re: VMWare ESX Server
bobk63 wrote:
Widget,
I am new to ESX Server and have a question since you seem to be knowledgeable about VMWare. I need to split my VMWare 5.0 Legacy session of Windows 2003 I created from 2.5gb to 2 or 3 smaller files to copy to my ESX Server via WinSCP. Can you help with what VMWare-VDiskManager commands I need to use to accomplish this?
Thanks in advance...
Bobk63
well, I think I found the answer already, so here it is:
At the command line, enter:
vmkfstools ‑e <folder>/<filename>.vmdk <vmhba number>:<filename>.dsk
Where:
<folder> is the name of the folder to which you are exporting
<filename> is the name of the file you are exporting
<vmhba number> is the name of the VMFS partition
For example:
vmkfstools ‑e /mnt/bigserver/putfileshere/mydisk.vmdk vmhba0:0:0:1:mydisk.dsk
Notes:
The ESX Server shell requires a backslash to escape each colon in the vmhba number and filename separator if you specify vmfs in the path, as shown in the following example:
/vmfs/vmhba0\:0\:0\:1\:mydisk.dsk
ESX Server 2.5 may use a .vmdk filename extension, so the file name following the vmhba number in the examples shown here might instead appear as vmhba0:0:0:1:mydisk.vmdk.
The vmkfstools command creates 2GB files on non-VMFS file systems, in the same way that the management interface file manager does.
Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:46 pm Post subject: Re: VMWare ESX Server
bobk63 wrote:
Widget, I am new to ESX Server and have a question since you seem to be knowledgeable about VMWare. I need to split my VMWare 5.0 Legacy session of Windows 2003 I created from 2.5gb to 2 or 3 smaller files to copy to my ESX Server via WinSCP. Can you help with what VMWare-VDiskManager commands I need to use to accomplish this? Thanks in advance... Bobk63
You can copy large files to ESX using FastSCP. There's no need to split files.
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