Windows Virtual Machines

Hi Guys, after some advice - my system at work has been setup using virtual machines running on ESXI (5.5.0) - one of the virtual servers hard-drives has now reached its capacity, I need to increase it.

I've no real understanding of virtual machines - so I'm a little worried about what to do next. Going to the properites of the drive in ESXI there's an option to change the limit - however doing so -will it have an effects on the virtual machine (which must stay running) - or the contents on it!

Last thing I need is for windows to reformat it or do something equally silly.

Picce HERE

 

Thankyou.. looks easy enough! - gulp!..

 

Yep -it's that easy to do. Just make sure the other machines on the shared disk are set with thick provisioned and not thin provisioned disks or you might run into problems when they reach their maximum.

I'd also advise taking a snapshot of your VM before doing anything. Just make sure to delete the snapshot afterwards when you are happy or else you'd end up with a massive delta file sometime in the future.

 

I was always taught never to have a snapshot when extending disks.

 

I used to freak the others in the office out as I had a nice little script that would do this for me!

 

Probably just me - but I get paranoid something would go wrong

 

Something around the disk state having changed so you wouldn't be able to revert it. But then dont quote me I am no expert and well the guys that were teaching me didnt appear to be either. That and I havent touched any infrastructure since August last year.

 

Before I touch anything i have to have a snapshot and a successful backup (oh and the recovery media as well) not needed any of it yet but I would rather have it for the day something went pop!