At a customers site we have 2 (+1 Backup and Test) ESXi server, working independently (without vSphere). The customers request is to replace an SSD RAID with 500GB with a 2TB one.
ESXi is installed on that SSD RAID. We used the 3rd server (test one) to test our workflow as described here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2002461
We DD'ed the original raid to the new raid so we have an exact copy of the original hard drive.
We booted ESXi successfully. It lost the mount of the datastore but esxcfg-volume -M succeeds. So everything is working again.
Now we tried to resize the partition and filesystem containing the datastore.
vmkfstools -P /vmfs/volumes/datastore1
gave us the name and partition, in this case
naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac269:3
partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac269
returned
243133 255 63 3905945600
1 64 8191 0 128
5 8224 520191 0 0
6 520224 1032191 0 0
7 1032224 1257471 0 0
8 1257504 1843199 0 0
9 1843200 7086079 0 0
2 7086080 15472639 0 0
3 15472640 975699934 0 0
partedUtil getUsableSectors /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac
returned
34 3905945566
so we did
partedUtil resize /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac269 3 15472640 3905945566
and expected by the KB we did
partedUtil fixGpt /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac269
for a backup copy of the partition table
Everything checked again looking perfectly fine and as expected. We have a working hard drive with a grown partition and ESXi still reports ~500GB SSD as expected because the final step would be resizing the vmfs.
vmkfstools --growfs /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac269:3 /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600605b00e7ef41025b05be20a1ac269:3
returns this:
Not found
Error: No such file or directory
And this is where we don't know whats the problem. We triple checked the paths, we used /dev/disks instead, we CD'ed into the directories and used the file without absolute path, etc. no different output. We tried using " and ' but I don't expect a problem with the :
We checked the logs on the scratch partition but no reason there.
I searched for like an hour online but the only help I found either had no responses or referenced the KBs with the hint that he/she made a mistake somewhere.
So we double checked all our actions again and I can't find any mistake I could have made. Essentially this is the same workflow as with any other linux system -> DD, resize partition, resize FS (unmounted).
(Yea we also tried it mounted and unmounted)
If you can see any mistake I made I can't see, please tell me. If you need any information, just ask.
If this case is successful the 2 live servers need to follow in about 2 weeks. But I need to be sure that the process works as expected.
Thank you for any help and have a nice day.
