Friday, 3 July 2009

Pump Up the Volume

You can change virtual machine disk configurations by adding new disks, changing disk sizes, and changing virtual device node settings. Since VMware ESX 3.5 U3, it’s possible to enlarge the size of a disk while the virtual machine is powered on. When you combine this new feature with the Dell ExtPart utility, you can Extend the OS disk the easy way. The ExtPart utility provides support for online volume expansion of NTFS formatted basic disks.

I recorded a little one minute demo with Jing.

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Eric Sloof

in vSphere at 22:02 | 15 Comments | No Trackbacks

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Yes, extpart is a great utility! However I've found it to work on 32-bit Operating Systems only (Windows 2003). So for 64-bit Windows 2003 you still have to use diskpart = more downtime

#1 Andre (Homepage) on 2009-03-21 23:41 (Reply)

Hey Eric, does extpart expand system disks (C:)? I do not see a benefit of using extpart for non-system disks, like the one you enlarged in the demo.... diskpart can extend that volume just as easily.

Great write up, just curious about the system disk compatibility, if extpart can extend system disks (online), that would be great !

#2 Rick Scherer (Homepage) on 2009-03-22 02:36 (Reply)

Extpart can extend online system disks.

#2.1 Eric Sloof on 2009-03-22 10:14 (Reply)

Did you notice on Windows 2008 sp1 and windows 7, you can expand C: partitions while running from diskmanager!

#3 Tomas ten dam (Homepage) on 2009-03-23 08:51 (Reply)

http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R64398

They moved the file location.

#4 jferguson on 2009-03-24 02:29 (Reply)

This tool has no added value if it isnt capable of online extending OS disks and disks holding an active paging file.

The diskpart interpreter comes with Windows 2003 so no additional tooling is necessary to extend volumes.

I will test this tool today in order to verify if it can extend OS disks online or not.

#5 John van der Sluis on 2009-04-17 09:13 (Reply)

It is capable of online extending OS disks and disks holding an active paging file.

#5.1 Eric Sloof on 2009-04-17 09:21 (Reply)

Eric, you're correct. It works like a charm.

Eric, can you confirm the following...

Extending VMDKs will most likely have an negative impact on performance if its extended on a datastore with more then one virtual machine. This is because the VMDK will not be a continuous file on the vmfs filesystem anymore.

John.

#5.1.1 John van der Sluis on 2009-04-17 12:10 (Reply)

I think you are right, BUT this split up of the VMDK will not have a significant impact if you compare it to the "normal" fragmentation of a NTFS volume.

Note: Extpart won't work in de C drive of and AD Domain Controller

#5.1.1.1 Viktor (Homepage) on 2009-07-05 14:05 (Reply)

I know Andre mentioned it, but no version that works on system disks for W2K3 x64?

#6 Doug on 2009-07-07 20:42 (Reply)

I have succesfully expanded system disks on W2K3 x64 machines. So ExtPart does work also in x64 machines.

#6.1 Vman on 2009-08-03 12:44 (Reply)

The downloaded file from Dell won't run on 64-bit.

However, it's a self-extracting archive. If you rename it to extpart.zip, you can copy the 'real' extpart.exe executable file out of the archive, and that file runs just fine on 64-bit 2003.

Just did it for an Exchange server, so definitely works.

#6.2 lazyllama (Homepage) on 2009-11-30 20:03 (Reply)

I got the following error when I tried to extend system c: drive. Any idea about that?

> c:\>extpart c: 4096
>
> ExtPart - Utility to extend basic disks (Build 1.0.4)
> (c) Dell Computer Corporation 2003
>
> Volume to extend (drive letter or mount point): c:
>
> Unable to connect to c: or it does not exist
>
> c:\>

#7 Vincent on 2009-10-23 17:37 (Reply)

Heb je hier ooit reactie op gehad?

#7.1 Thomas on 2010-05-04 17:04 (Reply)

Probably this machine is a Domain Controller. ExtPart won't work on the system disk of a DC...

#7.1.1 Viktor (Homepage) on 2010-05-05 23:20 (Reply)

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Pump Up the Volume

NTPRO.NL - Eric Sloof

Friday, 3 July 2009

Pump Up the Volume

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