Changes do not appear after expanding the virtual machine disk or expand disk is grayed out

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article describes what to do if changes to the size of a VMDK are not successful.

For information on changing the size of a VMDK, see Increasing the size of a virtual disk

Symptoms:

• Cannot expand the virtual machine disk (VMDK)
• Expanding the VMDK does not work or the option is grayed out
• The properties of the virtual machine, including the size of the disk, do not change in vCenter Server

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Resolution

This issue can occur if the snapshots associated with the disk are not consolidated prior to expanding the VMDK.

To resolve the issue, consolidate all snapshots associated with the disk.

For more information, see Consolidating snapshots