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Support for increasing NetScaler VPX disk space

NetScaler VPX supports a default disk space of 20 GB. If you encounter disk size constraints for various reasons, the following options are available to increase VPX disk space:

  • Manually increase the primary disk size
  • Dynamically increase the primary disk size
  • Add a secondary disk

Note:

Increasing the NetScaler VPX disk space features are supported for both VPX on-premises and VPX cloud.

Manually increase the primary disk size on NetScaler VPX

Steps to manually increase the VPX primary disk size from Hypervisor or Cloud.

  1. Shutdown the VM.
  2. Extend the default disk size of 20 GB to a higher value. For example, 20 GB to 30 GB or 40 GB. For Azure, extend the default disk size of 32 GB to 64 GB.
  3. Power on the VM and enter the boot prompt.
  4. Log into single user mode using the “boot -s” command.
  5. Verify the disk space. You can check the newly allocated disk space using “gpart show” command.
  6. Note the partition name. For example, the VM partition is da0.
  7. Resize the disk partition using the “gpart resize” command.

    Example: Let’s resize the da0 MBR partition to include 10 GB free space by running the following command.

    gpart resize -i 1 da0

  8. Merge the free space to the last partition.

    Example:

    gpart resize -i 5 da0s1

  9. Extend the filesystem to include newly allocated free space using the “growfs” command.

    Example:

    growfs /dev/da0s1e

  10. Reboot the VM and verify the increased disk space using the “df -h” command on shell prompt.

Dynamically increase the primary disk size on NetScaler VPX

Starting from NetScaler release 14.1 build 21.x, admins can dynamically increase the primary disk size on NetScaler VPX from 20 GB up to 1 TB at once. And the subsequent time, you can again increase up to 1 TB. Shut down the VM every time you increase the primary disk size. This ensures that the system properly recognizes the new disk size, updates the partition table, and maintains system stability. To increase the disk space, extend the primary disk size to a minimum of 1 GB in the respective cloud or hypervisor UI.

Note:

You can only increase the size of the disks. Once the new size is allocated, you cannot decrease it later. Therefore, increase the disk size only if it is essential.

Add a secondary disk

Starting from NetScaler release 13.1 build 21.x, you can increase disk space on the NetScaler VPX instance by adding a second disk. When you attach the second disk, the “/var/crash” directory is automatically mounted on to this disk. The second disk is used for storing core files and logging. Existing directories that are used to store core files and log files continue to work as earlier.

Note:

Take external backup on downgrade of the NetScaler appliance to avoid loss of data.

For information on how to attach a new hard disk drive (HDD) to a NetScaler VPX instance on a cloud, see the following:

Warning:

After you add a new HDD to VPX, some of the scripts that work on files, which are moved to the new HDD might fail under the following conditions:

If you use the “link” shell command to create hard links to the files, which were moved to a new HDD.

Replace all such commands with “ln -s” to use a symbolic link. Also, modify the failing scripts accordingly.

Support for increasing NetScaler VPX disk space