Although many have done it before, I still want to show that how we can actually expand our existing datastore in vSphere 4.1. First, your underlying storage must able to support Dynamic LUN expansion which most storage products can do lately. Second, I recommend we do this while all VMs sitting inside this datastore have being powered off. If you lazy, move out all VMs to other datastore via Storage vMotion and move it back once we finished.

Seriously, for my testing purpose I’m using Starwind iscsi server as my back-end storage device and attached it to one of the ESXi host(4.1):

Setup:

• Host: ESXi 4.1 Build 260247
• Datastore: VMFS (iscsi)
• Datastore name: DS01 (1.5GB)/ LUN 0

First of all, I need to re-size the target LUN on my iscsi server and once done it, open vSphere client > configuration > storage:

• Right click target datastore “DS01″
• Properties,
• Select LUN to expand,
• Review “Free Space”,
• Tick “Maximum capacity” if you want to full utilize it,
• Review the summary and click “Finish”

You suppose now have new datastore size for “DS01″ which is bigger than original one (1.5GB).

 

I made my first live tutorial in Bahasa here for your reference. The sound may not very clear to some of you and I’m sorry for that.