Today I have tried to expand a virtual disk online, a feature, which I have done on VMware for a long time,
but it looks that this feature is still not possible.
I understand that resizing a virtual disk is not possible, if it is a fixed size disk, or if it has snaphots on it,
but even with a dynamic sized disk, you still can’t do it online.
My plan was to resize the PostgreSQL Disk PGDisk02, which is a dynamic disk online.
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe showmediuminfo D:\OCM\Virtualbox\ocm199\PGDisk02.vdi UUID: 32545f8c-8791-4b3c-9a41-e5f0e6477446 Parent UUID: base State: locked write Type: normal (base) Location: D:\OCM\Virtualbox\ocm199\PGDisk02.vdi Storage format: VDI Format variant: dynamic default Capacity: 32768 MBytes Size on disk: 9 MBytes Encryption: disabled Property: AllocationBlockSize=1048576 In use by VMs: ocm199 (UUID: 4bca963d-eb2f-4179-91a8-132f67635b09)
Unfortunately, if you try to do so, you will run into the following error:
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe modifymedium disk D:\OCM\Virtualbox\ocm199\PGDisk02.vdi --resize 40960 VBoxManage.exe: error: Failed to lock media when resizing 'D:\OCM\Virtualbox\ocm199\PGDisk02.vdi' VBoxManage.exe: error: Details: code VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE (0x80bb0007), component MediumWrap, interface IMedium, callee IUnknown VBoxManage.exe: error: Context: "Resize(cbResize, pProgress.asOutParam())" at line 810 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp VBoxManage.exe: error: Failed to resize medium!
You really need to shutdown the Virtual Box VM first, to get the job done. After I did so, I could resize the
disk from 32GB to 40GB.
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe modifymedium disk D:\OCM\Virtualbox\ocm199\PGDisk02.vdi --resize 40960 0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Afterwards, it is immediately reflected in the Gui.
Now we can start up the VM and do the rest of the work.
However, like expected, in the OS it still has not the full capacity. That is very normal. You need to expand the PV disk first, and afterwards use lvextend to do the rest.
[root@ocm199 ~]# df -h | grep ptdbdata /dev/mapper/pgvgdata-pglvdata 21G 183M 21G 1% /ptdbdata [root@ocm199 ~]# [root@ocm199 ~]# cat /etc/fstab | grep ptdbdata /dev/pgvgdata/pglvdata /ptdbdata xfs defaults 0 0 [root@ocm199 ~]# [root@ocm199 ~]# pvs | grep pgvgdata /dev/nvme0n9 pgvgdata lvm2 a-- <22.00g 1020.00m [root@ocm199 ~]# pvresize /dev/nvme0n9 Physical volume "/dev/nvme0n9" changed 1 physical volume(s) resized or updated / 0 physical volume(s) not resized
The PV disk reflects now the new size. (40GB)
[root@ocm199 ~]# pvs | grep pgvgdata /dev/nvme0n9 pgvgdata lvm2 a-- 40.00g 19.00g
Now we can use lvresize to extend the logical volumne to it’s full extent (100%) and at the same time extend the XFS file system.
[root@ocm199 ~]# lvresize --extents +100%FREE --resizefs /dev/pgvgdata/pglvdata Size of logical volume pgvgdata/pglvdata changed from 21.00 GiB (5376 extents) to 40.00 GiB (10239 extents). Logical volume pgvgdata/pglvdata successfully resized. meta-data=/dev/mapper/pgvgdata-pglvdata isize=512 agcount=4, agsize=1376256 blks = sectsz=512 attr=2, projid32bit=1 = crc=1 finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0 = reflink=1 data = bsize=4096 blocks=5505024, imaxpct=25 = sunit=0 swidth=0 blks naming =version 2 bsize=4096 ascii-ci=0, ftype=1 log =internal log bsize=4096 blocks=2688, version=2 = sectsz=512 sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1 realtime =none extsz=4096 blocks=0, rtextents=0 data blocks changed from 5505024 to 10484736 [root@ocm199 ~]# df -h | grep ptdbdata /dev/mapper/pgvgdata-pglvdata 40G 318M 40G 1% /ptdbdata
Conclusion
Unfortunately, the online resize feature is still not available with Virtual Box Version 6.1.16. In case I
have missed something, and it is possible, then please leave a comment.