virtual hard dive size

liven

Ok,

I created a solaris vm machine, but I didn't pre allocate any hard drive space. So now that the vm is up and running, I have noticed it used about 6 gigs of total hard drive space. Needless to say that this is not enough. I would like to add at least 2 or 4 more gigs.

I didn't allocate any space while initially setting up the machine because it was just a test and I wasn't sure if it would even work.

Anyway, can I go back now and increase the amount of disk space that the VM can use?

dynamik

What virtualization software are you using? I use VMWare Workstation, and I don't remember seeing an option to increase the size, but it might be possible. What did you put as the size of the drive when you created it?

Preallocation doesn't affect the available space of a virtual drive. It just increases performance at the cost of taking space from your host drive that you may not actually have used.

If you don't need it to be contiguous, you can simply add another virtual drive.

liven

dynamik wrote:

What virtualization software are you using? I use VMWare Workstation, and I don't remember seeing an option to increase the size, but it might be possible. What did you put as the size of the drive when you created it?

Preallocation doesn't affect the available space of a virtual drive. It just increases performance at the cost of taking space from your host drive that you may not actually have used.

If you don't need it to be contiguous, you can simply add another virtual drive.

VMserver..

I unchecked the box to allocate space when creating the virtual machine, I think it just allocates on the fly this way...

WHat I might do is just create a flash archive of the image, and then rebuild the vm with about 10 or 12 gigs of space...

Or I might become a bull fighter. Still have not decided.

dynamik

Yea, it allocates it as you need it, which is why it will negatively affect performance (but save your host drive space until you fill up your drive) when you add data to it. However, you should have still specified a drive size when you created your virtual drive. That's going to be the hard limit you'll run up against.

I actually researched increasing virtual drive sizes, and it looks like quite a convoluted process. The easiest method I came across was to just add a second virtual drive that's the size you want, and image the data over to it.

liven

dynamik wrote:

Yea, it allocates it as you need it, which is why it will negatively affect performance (but save your host drive space until you fill up your drive) when you add data to it. However, you should have still specified a drive size when you created your virtual drive. That's going to be the hard limit you'll run up against.

I actually researched increasing virtual drive sizes, and it looks like quite a convoluted process. The easiest method I came across was to just add a second virtual drive that's the size you want, and image the data over to it.

Ok thanks!

However the entire goal of the project I am working on was/is to document the process of installing, and hardening solaris 10. And we typcially use a flar (flash archive) to do the install.

So I can create my flar, create a new virtual machine with more drive space, and move on from there.

Although it would be cool to learn the process you mentioned. Creating a second virtual drive...

I will let you know how it goes.

RTmarc

Why not just use the command line tool to increase the size of the disk? Vmware-diskmanager.exe can be found in the Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\ directory.

vmware-vdiskmanager -x ###GB filepath.vmdk

Swap ### for whatever size and filepath.vmdk points to the virtual hard disk. From there you'll need to use a utility to increase the partition size. I'm not sure what the Solaris counterpart of DiskPart or Acronis Disk Director is but I'm sure there is something out there.

The process is a lot more intimidating than it actually is.

liven

Thanks RT that was very good info!!!