Add hard disk to VMware CentOS 7 VM

Jirawat Uttayaya — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 16:23:58 +0000

There are two easy steps to add a hard disk for a VMware CentOS 7 VM.

Assign a new hard disk in VMware vSphere
Configure the new hard disk in CentOS

Assign hard disk in vSphere

In VMware vSphere, right click on the VM and select "Edit Settings..."
In the "New device:" section, select "SCSI Controller", and click the "OK" button. Note, there is a hard limit of 4 SCSI Controllers per VM.
Right click "Edit Settings..." again and select "New Hard Disk"
Input the byte size of the new hard disk (in this example, 5 GB). In the "Virtual Device Node" section, assign the new SCSI controller number. Click the "OK" button.

Configure new hard disk in CentOS

SSH into the CentOS VM and sudo to root
sudo su -
List the block device to see the newly assigned vSphere hard disk.
lsblk

If you do not see the vSphere hard disk, force a rescan

for host in $(ls -1d /sys/class/scsi_host/*); do echo "- - -" > ${host}/scan ; done
for device in $(ls -1d /sys/class/scsi_disk/*); do echo "1" > ${device}/device/rescan ; done

Format the disk partition. Get the device name from the previous lsblk output
fdisk /dev/sdb
See the screenshot for the options you should pick
n (new partition)
p (primary)
(Press ENTER) (Use default partition number)
(Press ENTER) (Use default first sector)
(Press ENTER) (Use default last sector)

t (change the partition type)
8e (Linux LVM)

w (write)
List the block device again to display the new disk partition /dev/sdb1
Initialize the physical volume
pvcreate /dev/sdb1
pvs (to display the new physical volume)
Create the volume group
vgcreate vgBackup /dev/sdb1 (vgBackup is just an name for this example. The volume group name can be whatever you want)
vgs (to display the volume group)
Create the logical volume for the volume group
lvcreate -n lvBackup -l +100%FREE vgBackup (lvBackup is just an name for this example. The logical volume name can be whatever you want)
lvs (to display the logical volume)
Construct an XFS filesystem on the new logical volume
mkfs.xfs /dev/vgBackup/lvBackup
Mount a Unix directory to the logical volume
Edit the text file /etc/fstab and add the line below:
/dev/vgBackup/lvBackup /backup xfs defaults 1 2

mkdir -p /backup
mount /backup
df -h (to display the new directory)

To learn more about Unix Logical Volumes, go to official RedHat LVM docs

DEV Community: Jirawat Uttayaya

Add hard disk to VMware CentOS 7 VM

Assign hard disk in vSphere

Configure new hard disk in CentOS