How to increase VMWare VMFS datastore space

This frustrating issue took me a while to resolve. One of my virtual machines was running low on disk space and I can't expand the vdisk because the free space on the datastore was running low as well. Only thing to do is to increase the LUN provisioning.

However, after increasing the space in the LUN, the datastore still reflects the same amount of space! I went to view the properties of the datastore and saw this. On the device, it correctly reflects the increased capacity of 110GB while the primary partition still shows 100GB.




Perhaps I need to re-format the entire partition in VMFS to increase the partition? I clicked on the "increase" button and found nothing.



Did some serious googling and found some articles referencing this VMWare KB
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1017662

Saw this in step 3 "Open another vSphere client that connects directly to the ESX host.". This must be the reason! I opened another vSphere session that connects directly to the ESXi host instead of managing it from vCenter. Did the same steps to increase the datastore and this time, I can see some LUNs available for selection. Select the LUN with "Yes" in the "Expandable" column.




After clicking next and applying, the datastore's capacity increased to 110GB.