ubuntu gce instance doesn't recognize large disk (5T)

[Fang Deng]

I am trying to create an instance with 5500GB.

gcloud compute --project MY_PROJECT instances create "my-test-instance" --zone "us-central1-b" --machine-type "n1-standard-32" --network "default" --maintenance-policy "MIGRATE" --scopes "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform" --tags "http-server","https-server" --image "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/ubuntu-os-cloud/global/images/ubuntu-1404-trusty-v20160114e" --boot-disk-size "5500" --boot-disk-type "pd-standard" --boot-disk-device-name "my-test-instance"

It turns out that the resulting instance only shows 2T storage

$ df -h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

udev            114G  8.0K  114G   1% /dev

tmpfs            23G  332K   23G   1% /run

/dev/sda1       2.0T  535G  1.4T  28% /

none            4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup

none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock

none            114G     0  114G   0% /run/shm

none            100M     0  100M   0% /run/user

Does anyone know how I can make the storage visible to the system?

Fang

[Robert Fischer]

Did you originally have a smaller disk and just resize to 5.5TB?

Relevant post if this is the case: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/gce-discussion/tNMfK_S7niY/7bR0rcQ4lPAJ

-Robert

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[Faizan (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Fang,

Google Compute Engine Ubuntu images will only auto resize the root partition up to 2 TB as mentioned on this link:  

All Compute Engine Ubuntu images will automatically resize the root partition to use the entire disk, up to a 2 TB limit. Even if the disk is larger than 2 TB, the operating system only recognizes up to 2 TB.

With that said, you need to manually repartition your disk. The steps are mentioned on this link

I hope that helps.

Faizan

[Fang Deng]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the reply. No, I just let the command to create the disk together with creating the instance. 

Fang

[Fang Deng]

It looks like the physical size of the disk is 5.4T, but the file system only sees 2T. How can I make the rest of the disk visible?

$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 5.4T 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 2T 0 part /


I saw in the doc:
All Compute Engine Ubuntu images will automatically resize the root partition to use the entire disk, up to a 2 TB limit. Even if the disk is larger than 2 TB, the operating system only recognizes up to 2 TB. Is there a workaround?

[Faizan (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Feng,

As mentioned in my previous response you need to manually repartition the root disk to the size of your disk (5TB). The steps are documented on this link.