You can resize Alibaba Cloud disks online without having to restart ECS instances. If the ECS instances you want to resize were created before March 30, 2019, follow the procedures described in this topic to check whether the Red Hat VirtIO SCSI driver for these instances need to be updated.

Instructions

  • The Red Hat VirtIO SCSI driver supports only Windows Server 2008 and later.
  • If an ECS instance is equipped with multiple data disks, the driver update process may take a few minutes.

Download a driver

Download and decompress the instdrv driver package. The following table describes the relationship between operating systems of ECS instances and extracted driver folders.

Driver folder name Folder description
win7 Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7
Wlh Windows Server 2008
Win8 Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2
win10 Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server systems in later versions
amd64 64-bit
x86 32-bit
instdrv.exe Checks whether ECS instances can be resized online

Check the driver version

Method 1: Use instdrv.exe to check the driver version.

  1. Remotely connect to a Windows ECS instance.
  2. Open Command Prompt.
  3. Go to the directory where instdrv.exe resides. For example, run the cd C:\User|lizr\Desktop\instdrv\ command to go to the directory.
  4. (Optional) Run the instdrv.exe program to view the instructions on how to use the tool. Run the instdrv.exe -v command to view the version of the tool.
  5. Run the instdrv.exe -c command. You can determine whether the operating system supports online resizing based on the command output. If yes, you can directly resize cloud disks online. If not, you need to update the Red Hat VirtIO SCSI driver.
    Run the instdrv.exe -c command

Method 2: Manually check the driver version.

  1. Remotely connect to a Windows ECS instance.
  2. Go to the system directory C:\Windows\System32\drivers.
  3. Right-click the viostor.sys file and choose Properties from the shortcut menu. On the page that appears, choose Details > File version to view the driver version. If the version of the Red Hat VirtIO SCSI driver for a Windows Server ECS instance is greater than or equal to 58011, you can directly resize cloud disks online. If the driver version is smaller than 58011, update the Red Hat VirtIO SCSI driver.
    Right-click the viostor.sys file

Update the Red Hat VirtIO SCSI driver

Method 1: Use pnputil to add a driver.
  1. Open Command Prompt.
  2. Go to the directory where viostor.inf resides. For example, run the cd C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\amd command to go to the directory.
  3. Run the pnputil –i –a <directory> command to add a driver package. Make sure that you have decompressed the target .inf file to the directory specified with <directory>.
    Run the pnputil –i –a <directory> command
  4. Restart the operating system of the ECS instance to make the driver update take effect.
Method 2: Manually add a driver.
  1. Open Device Manager.
  2. Right-click Red Hat VirtIO SCSI controller under Storage controllers, and select Update Driver Software....
    Right-click Red Hat VirtIO SCSI controller under Storage controllers
  3. Select Browse my computer for driver software.
  4. Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
  5. Click Have Disk.
  6. Select the driver file viostor in the corresponding folder, and follow the wizard to update the driver.
  7. Restart the operating system of the ECS instance to make the driver update take effect.

Next operations

Resize cloud disks online