Unable to expand volume

ubern00b · 6 Mar 2015 at 10:07

Hi all

I have a LUN on a server that ran out of disk space and so I increased the size of the LUN and tried to expand it from within Windows (2008 R2) but receive a "there is insufficient space to expand the volume".

I have done some investigation and it seems I need a third party tool to be able to expand this as diskpart or disk manager simply won't work.

Does anyone know of a free third party partition manager that would accomplish what I need to do? Something like GParted is not an option as this is an iSCSI LUN so won't be seen outside of Windows.

Thanks in advance!

quickshot89 · 6 Mar 2015 at 10:11

Rescanned the VDU?

Little_Crow · 6 Mar 2015 at 11:29

I've expanded disks in 2008R2 many a time, and never had an issue.
As quickshot said, have you rescanned to make sure the server can see the additional space you want to expand into.

ubern00b · 6 Mar 2015 at 11:37

Yes, have rescanned many times, the LUN shows the additional space that can be expanded but because there is 0MB free, it isn't allowing it to expand.

anything I don't mind · 6 Mar 2015 at 11:38

Clear some free space and try again?

Little_Crow · 6 Mar 2015 at 11:42

Is this a VM? What's the backend storage it's attached to - and is it replicated?

ubern00b · 6 Mar 2015 at 11:47

it is a DAG server in an Exchange estate hosting a mailbox database. It is not the active mount so if push comes to shove I could wipe the LUN and re-replicate the data but that is a bit extreme and I am 99% sure my boss will not be happy with that as a "solution". So, trying to find an alternative.

Little_Crow · 6 Mar 2015 at 12:01

The reason I asked about replication is we have VNX5700's replicated using recoverpoint.

You can expand the LUN with no issues, but recoverpoint prevents the server from seeing the change - this is the only time I've seen a LUN be expanded but the server was unable to see the additional space.

ubern00b · 6 Mar 2015 at 12:18

Oh I see, no we don't have anything like that in place. This server is a member of a 3 node DAG all running from an HP Lefthand P4000 SAN, the other 2 DAG members expanded their storage just fine (but they had at least 1MB of free space) but this one is being a pain.

I could try reboot the server and see if it releases any space on the LUN. Always loath to reboot in scenarios like this in case it doesn't come back up for any reason.

Also to answer your questions earlier it is a VM (ESXi 5.5) and backend storage is as explained above.

ubern00b · 6 Mar 2015 at 16:24

Managed to expand the LUN by stopping the Exchange Indexer Search Service, moving the oldest and largest .ci file off the LUN and then expanding it, move the file back and restart the service. Simples!