How to expand a VM storage across multiple HDD?

KingTChoka

Member
Sep 4, 2021
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Hi,

I currently have a VM with its storage attached to one HDD. It's now running out of space.

I would like to add another HDD, so how can I expand the VM to have it's storage across these two HDDs?

Thanks!
 
That depends on the use underlying technology (LVM/LVM-thin, ZFS) is easy, everything else is harder.
Keep in mind that the odds of failure are much higher with two disks "connected" (e.g. RAID0) as they were with two independent storages.
The easiest solution would be to just add another storage and move VMs there.
 
That depends on the use underlying technology (LVM/LVM-thin, ZFS) is easy, everything else is harder.
Keep in mind that the odds of failure are much higher with two disks "connected" (e.g. RAID0) as they were with two independent storages.
The easiest solution would be to just add another storage and move VMs there.
Well it's the one VM that currently sits on that one HDD. Also I believe the underlying tech is LVM.

Follow up question though: If I use two HDD for the one VM (with RAID 0) and one of the HDD fails, is the other (working) HDD data still accessible (perhaps not accessible by the VM itself, but still accessible by other means to recover the data)?
 
If I use two HDD for the one VM (with RAID 0) and one of the HDD fails, is the other (working) HDD data still accessible (perhaps not accessible by the VM itself, but still accessible by other means to recover the data)?

With a raid0/stripe/any mechanism that splits data across multiple devices (without any additional redundancy): No, all is gone!

You lost half of your data; from where should that half magically come back, to get complete and functional data/files again?

As LnxBil said, you could add a second vdisk on the second HDD to that VM or get a bigger HDD and move the vdisk over and expand it or think about a proper raid with redundancy.
 

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