Vmware and unable to expand a disk

I have this rule about losing a technical person. in about a month, some service that person knew the most about will have an issue. And like clockwork, it happens. So, our student info system decided to grow to its full capacity on the disk and max out the vmware disk. No problem, expand the lun, scan for changes, have vmware expand its disk. ah, not so much. vmware could see the change in size, but couldn't expand. after spending time on the phone with support, going directly into the vmware host, not the management piece, we could expand the disk in vmware. then we were able to go into windows etc and do that virtual host piece. Lesson learned and notated.