Resizing Storage Repositories in XenServer

Dynamically resize your XenServer 5.5 Fibre Channel SR

While XenServer 5.5 has a pretty decent GUI, there are still a few tasks that we have to use the command line for. Resizing Storage Repositories would be one of those tasks. In my environment, we use a Fibre Channel SR in our main XenServer resource pool, so I can vouch that these steps will work for that type of environment.

Before starting with these steps, make sure you have actually resized the LUN using whatever software provided by your SAN vendor. This process is simply getting XenServer to recognize the change.

1. Open the console of your XenServer Resource Pool Master.
2. Run xe sr-list
3. Find the UUID associated with the name of the SR you wish to resize. Make note of the UUID (I just copy it).
4. Next, find the device name. To do this, run pvscan | grep <uuid> - The device name will look like /dev/sdb – Make note of this as well.
5. Run pvresize <devname>
6. Run xe sr-scan <uuid>
7. Verify that the SR shows the new size in XenCenter.

It’s a simple process, though I forget how to do it every time. Now it’s written down for all to see!