The problem? A general system error occurred: The file is too big for the filesystem
This was the error I received when attempting to create a 600GB Virtual Disk on VMWare ESX Server 3.5.
This was a problem. I learned the reason why though. Since I partitioned the storage volumes during installation the installer used block size 1 which only allows Virtual Disks of 256GB.
The solution? Reformat the volume with larger block sizes.
Block size Max Virtual Disk size
1 256 GB
2 512 GB
4 1024 GB
8 2048 GB
Now I had to figure out how to do this without destroying my data.
My server has a 73GB Mirrored boot drive and 900GB of RAID 10. Fortunatly I had enough free space on the boot drive to transfer the data from the RAID 10 temporarily.
Logging into the console of the host I:
cd /vmfs/volumes/vh-01:storage1
Having previously taken note of the volume label and the device name of the volume I wished to modify, in my case vh-01:storage1 and vmhba1:1:0:1, I move the existing data out of Storage1 and into Storage2.
Use the Storage Browser to move your VMs
Next I ran the command to reformat Storage2
vmkfstools --createfs vmfs3 --blocksize 4M -S vh-01:storage1 vmhba1:1:0:1
I chose a 4MB blocksize because this volume will never exceed 1024MB.
Then I just moved the data back to Storage1.
5 comments:
Thank you for your kind sharing. I bumped into this block size problem today again. Before this, I usually delete the datastore and re-create another one with larger block size. For some reason, this didn't work this time, and gladly that an expert on vmware forum refer me to this blog. Thank you!
Thanks very much for sharing this! I had exactly the same problem and just needed this excellent reminder to set me on the right path.
Cheers
Your Blog rocks..thanks
Marpos
thanks for info! Helped out big time!
Thaks man this helped a lot
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