"Failed to extend disk : One of the parameters supplied is invalid (1)" error while resizing a virtual disk (.vmdk)

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When trying to resize a virtual disk (.vmdk) in VMware, you see error message similar to:
  [root@esxi60ga-1:/vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0] vmkfstools -X 1G -d eagerzeroedthick /vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0/vCenter6.0_1.vmdk
  Failed to extend disk : One of the parameters supplied is invalid (1).
• The parameters and the syntax is correct.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Cause

This issue occurs when a user specifies the amount to increase the disk, but did not specify the total disk allocation.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, specify the total size to allocate to the disk, not just the size to be expanded.

For example, if the disk is 2 GB and we want to add 1 GB we must state as size 3 GB:

[root@esxi60ga-1:/vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0] vmkfstools -X 3G -d eagerzeroedthick /vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0/vCenter6.0_1.vmdk

The output looks similar to:

[root@esxi60ga-1:/vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0] vmkfstools -X 3G -d eagerzeroedthick /vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0/vCenter6.0_1.vmdk
Grow: 100% done.All data on '/vmfs/volumes/54ff13af-617bc66e-6c1b-0050560337e9/vCenter6.0/vCenter6.0_1.vmdk' will be overwritten with zeros from sector <4194304> onwards.
Zeroing: 100% done.