Azure disk size too small. Linux basic A0 only 29GB

Question

I have just created a linux (Ubuntu 14.4) virtual machine in Azure (SE Asia)

Issue: I only have 29GB not 127GB

It is a Basic Tier, A0 (smallest size)

The advertised disk drive size is 127GB (+20GB tmp)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn197896.aspx

I find (after running out of disk space) that I only have around 29GB.

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1        29G   24G  4.1G  86% /
none            4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev            323M   12K  323M   1% /dev
tmpfs            68M  388K   67M   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            336M     0  336M   0% /run/shm
none            100M     0  100M   0% /run/user
/dev/sdb1        20G  4.3G   15G  23% /mnt

Running cfdisk shows there is no other free space on the drive.

I can't find any documentation to suggest why only 29GB.

Is this a bug/issue/problem with my VM?

Or is it something to do with linux/ubuntu 14.4/basic tier A0 ?

Answer 1

The VM's operating system drive is backed by a blob in your Azure storage account. The blob is a VHD file. When you created the VM, the appropriate VHD was copied from the gallery into your storage account.

The gallery-provided VHD file has a logical capacity of 30GB by design. The documentation states that the maximum allowed size is 127GB, but that is incidental - the gallery images are 30GB.

The solution is two steps, resize the VHD itself (and corresponding blob), then use Linux tooling to resize the partition. This may help:

Resizing a Windows Azure virtual disk