Mechanisms are provided for automatically expanding a virtual storage of a virtual machine. The virtual machine monitors a usage of the virtual storage of the virtual machine. The virtual machine determines, based on the monitoring of the usage of the virtual storage, whether to expand the virtual storage of the virtual machine. In response to the virtual machine determining to expand the virtual storage of the virtual machine, a virtual machine manager executes one or more operations to expand the virtual storage. The monitoring and determining may be performed by a virtual storage management agent executing within the virtual machine and which may send an expansion request to an authorization engine to request expansion of the virtual storage.