Increasing the disk space for the vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 and 8.0
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Increasing the disk space for the vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 and 8.0

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Article ID: 316602

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to increase the disk space of a specific VMDK for the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 and 8.0. With the introduction of Logical Volume Management (LVM) in vSphere 6.0 and continued support with vSphere 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 and 8.0, the vCenter Server disks can be dynamically increased.

For more information on the disk layout of vCenter Server, see:


Notes:

  • Resizing the root partition (VMDK1 listed in the KB above) is not supported on 6.5. See the vSphere 6.5 Release Notes for more information. 
  • Resizing root partition has been added to 6.7. 
  • Resizing root partition is not supported on 7.0 and above.
  • This KB is also relevant for SEAT partition full or any other vCenter appliance partition full issues.
  • This KB also applies to external Platform Service Controllers [PSC]
  • If the vCenter/PSC is inaccessible, connect directly to the ESXi host running the virtual machine.
  • If extending VMDK size option is greyed out, the disk may be running on snapshots, or the disk may be at the maximum allowed size depending on the block size of the datastore. Remove any snapshots attached to the vCenter VM before progressing and ensure a full file-level backup of the vCenter before extending any partitions.

Information on VMware Natively Supported File-Based Backup

File-Based Backup and Restore of vCenter Serve Appliance 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x

Resolution

To increase the disk space

  1. Power off the vCenter Server VM. If the VM is inaccessible, then do this from ESXi host level
  2. Right-click the VM.
  3. Click Edit Settings.
  4. Select Virtual Disk.
  5. Increase the size of the disk. Ensuring there is no snapshot attached to VM. 
  6. Power on VM
  7. Use the BASH Shell or Appliance Management CLI to expand the partition(s).

Mapping vCenter Logical Volume to a real hard disk

  1. Run this command to find the logical volume mapping to partition

lsblk -o NAME,HCTL,MOUNTPOINT,SIZE

  1. Get the realpath PCI device details for each device

ls -al /sys/block/sd*

  1. Identify the partition that need to be increased, for example let's take /storage/lvm_snapshot which maps to logical volume /sys/block/sdq
  2. Find the SCSI label for the PCI device

cat /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/0000:02:00.0/label

Note: If the device realpath which we get in step2 is not having serial number format before the host folder (4th folder level) then that maps to SCSI0, for example /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.0/ maps to SCSI0
Mapping SCSI device.

  1. Now we know that the partition /sys/block/sdq is mapped to SCSI device 1 and Unit number 1 (From the 3rd part of HCTL from output of step1), which means it maps to SCSI(1:1).

    6. To put it more simply, in VCSA the letter in /dev/sdX follows the alphabetical order to indicate the sequence of hard disks detected by the system.

  • a = Hard Disk 1 (/dev/sda)

  • b = Hard Disk 2 (/dev/sdb)

  • ...

  • q is the 17th letter of the alphabet so sdq is Hard Disk 17

 

Increase disk space using BASH Shell

Note: Ensure there is a no snapshot attached to vCenter Server VM
  1. Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance using SSH and root credentials.
  2. Run this command to enable the Bash shell:

    shell.set --enabled true
     
  3. Type shell and press Enter.
  4. Use these commands to verify which disk is experiencing disk capacity issues, then trace which SCSI ID will show in the VM edit settings:

    df -h; lsblk; lsscsi

    For example, if the following command results in the execution of
    /storage/log corresponds to sde and the SCSI ID is SCSI(0:4).

    The virtual hard disk displayed as SCSI(0:4) in the virtual device node of the virtual machine settings corresponds to the /storage/log disk. 
    -----------------
    :
    /dev/mapper/log_vg-log 9.8G 4.4G 5.0G 47% /storage/log
    :
    sdd 8:48 0 25G 0 disk
    mqcore_vg-core 254:12 0 25G 0 lvm /storage/core
    ★sde 8:64 0 10G 0 disk
    ★ mqlog_vg-log 254:14 0 10G 0 lvm /storage/log
    sdf 8:80 0 10G 0 disk
    mqdb_vg-db 254:5 0 10G 0 lvm /storage/db
    :
    [2:0:3:0] disk VMware Virtual disk 1.0 /dev/sdd
    ★[2:0:4:0] disk VMware Virtual disk 1.0 /dev/sde
    [2:0:5:0] disk VMware Virtual disk 1.0 /dev/sdf
    -----------------
  5. Using the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client, locate the vCenter Server Appliance virtual machine and increase the disk space on the affected virtual disk. For more information, see Increasing the size of a virtual disk.
     
  6. After the virtual disk is increased, return to the SSH session and run this command to automatically expand any logical volumes for which the physical volumes are increased:

    /usr/lib/applmgmt/support/scripts/autogrow.sh
     
  7. Run this command to confirm that the virtual disk has successfully grown:

    df -h

Note: In a scenario where the vcenter upgrade pre-check is failing with the error "Vcenter pre-check error, "vcenter" has 27GB free space which is less than the required 30GB"

           1.Root partition (/): Contains the operating system files , but, Resizing root partition is not supported on 7.0 and above.

           2.Clearing out the journalctl log will clear out the space instead 

           3. Command that can be used to clear out the journalctl logs is as below

               (SSH into the vCenter and run the below command)

              #journalctl --vacuum-time=1h 

           4. This command is used to query and display messages from the journal and deletes the log entries older than one hour. 

           5. Run this command to check the size of the root and other partitions 

              #df -h

 

Increase disk space using Appliance Management CLI

Note: The commands: com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list has to be executed from the Command > location and the command does not work if ran inside the shell prompt.

Command ran successfully:


Failed command: Ensure command is ran in correct environment. An example failure from the shell is below:
 
root@hostname# com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list 
bash: com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list: command not found
 
  1. Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance using SSH and root credentials.
  2. Run this command to verify which disk is experiencing disk capacity issues:
For vCenter Server Appliance 6.5:
com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list
 
For vCenter Server Appliance 6.7:
com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list

An output similar to the following is seen:
...
7:
Totalinodes: 655360
Usedinodes: 4211
Name: /storage/seat
Totalkbytes: 10181944
Usedkbytes: 9081843
...

For vCenter Server Appliance 7.0, execute the BASH Shell procedure instead.
  1. Using the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client, locate the vCenter Server Appliance virtual machine and increase the disk space on the affected virtual disk. For more information, see Increasing the size of a virtual disk.
     
  2. After the virtual disk is increased, return to the SSH session and run this command to automatically expand any logical volumes for which the physical volumes are increased:
For vCenter Server Appliance 6.5:
com.vmware.appliance.version1.system.storage.resize

For vCenter Server Appliance 6.7:
com.vmware.appliance.system.storage.resize
  1. Run the command again to confirm that the virtual disk has been successfully grown:
For vCenter Server Appliance 6.5:
     com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list

For vCenter Server Appliance 6.7:
com.vmware.appliance.version1.resources.storage.stats.list
 
An output similar to the following is seen:
...
7:
Totalinodes: 786432
Usedinodes: 4211
Name: /storage/seat
Totalkbytes: 12246192
Usedkbytes: 9081843

Additional Information

If you get this error below when attempting to grow a partition, see this article: autogrow.sh fails to increase partition size due to LVM logical volumes snapshot

Snapshot origin volumes can be resized only while inactive: try lvchange -an
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