Adding A New Virtual Disk In A VM – Citrix XenServer

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When you’re running a server in a Virtual Environment with type one hypervisor and you’re require to add a new disk to your virtual machine then you will not have to bring down the server to add a new disk. You can do it with uptime. Here’s how you can do it in Citrix XenServer.

Connect to your XenServer using XenCenter(On Windows) or OpenXenManager(Linux – Unofficial). I’m using OpenXenManager.

Select a Virtual Machine in which you want to add a new disk. Open Storage tab and click on Add button.

Select which storage you want to use to create a Virtual Disk from. Name your virtual disk, fill a descriptive description or the purpose of the disk. e.g. what it will be used for. Size of the Virtual Disk and click on Apply button.

Verify the new storage in Storage tab of your Virtual Machine.

Login to your VM and list disks using fdisk utility.

[root@dbnode1 postgres]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/xvda: 214.7 GB, 214748364800 bytes, 419430400 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000cdbad

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/xvda1   *        2048     2099199     1048576   83  Linux
/dev/xvda2         2099200   419430399   208665600   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/mapper/ol_dbnode1-root: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes, 104857600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/ol_dbnode1-swap: 2147 MB, 2147483648 bytes, 4194304 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/ol_dbnode1-home: 157.8 GB, 157831659520 bytes, 308264960 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/xvdb: 5368 MB, 5368709120 bytes, 10485760 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xc5005674

Check this post to know how to mount it.

There you go. Peace 🙂