Cannot expand VMFS datastore on single extent.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Unable to increase datastore size from vCenter, Host Client or Host CLI.

The datastore is on a single LUN, and the LUN was already expanded on the storage side.

 

 

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Cause

This will occur if there are 2 partitions on the same LUN for the same datastore, for example:

In esxcli storage vmfs extent list output the impacted datastore shows 2 extents and both will have the same naa serial number showing 2 different partitions.

Example:

Volume Name                                 VMFS UUID                            Extent Number  Device Name                                               Partition
------------------------------------------  -----------------------------------  -------------  ------------------------------------  ---------
Datastore_Name1                             Datastore_UUID_1                                 0  naa.################################          1
Datastore_Name1                             Datastore_UUID_1                                 1  naa.################################          2

 

# vmkfstools -Ph -v10 /vmfs/volumes/<DATASTORE_#1>

VMFS-6.82 (Raw Major Version: 24) file system spanning 2 partitions.

File system label (if any): <DATASTORE_#1>

Mode: public ATS-only

Capacity 39.8 GB, 26.7 GB available, file block size 1 MB, max supported file size 64 TB

Volume Creation Time: Wed Apr 8 08:56:30 2020

Files (max/free): 16384/16348

Ptr Blocks (max/free): 0/0

Sub Blocks (max/free): 16384/16363

Secondary Ptr Blocks (max/free): 256/255

File Blocks (overcommit/used/overcommit %): 0/13316/0

Ptr Blocks (overcommit/used/overcommit %): 0/0/0

Sub Blocks (overcommit/used/overcommit %): 0/21/0

Large File Blocks (total/used/file block clusters): 80/0/80

Volume Metadata size: 1502871552

Disk Block Size: 512/512/0

UUID: <UUID_#1>

Logical device: <LVM_UUID_#1>

Partitions spanned (on "lvm"):

    <naa_id_#1>:1

    <naa_id_#1>:2

Unable to connect to vaai-nasd socket [No such file or directory]

Is Native Snapshot Capable: NO

OBJLIB-LIB: ObjLib cleanup done.

WORKER: asyncOps=0 maxActiveOps=0 maxPending=0 maxCompleted=0

 

The naa_ids seen under the "Partition Spanned" in the above output will be the same naa_ids.

 

Resolution

There is no resolution.

Workaround:

Create a new replacement datastore with the required size.

Migrate all data from the impacted datastore to the replacement datastore.

Delete the impacted datastore.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:

The datastore cannot be expanded.