For the second server ( a clone of the first but without the extra TB in /, so the same issue with /var )
I managed to get everything to work by adding the drivespace to the VM.
going through the pvcreate steps, and then the
"vgextend /dev/VolGroup00 /dev/sda3"
and
"lvextend -r -l +100%FREE /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol03"

It looks like we now have more space in /var
as long as this survives a reboot, I'm good on the second server.

Still need to work to fix the first.

Would have loved to set these servers up with ext4 (that's what I worked with on my Novell OES servers) but these new ones were provided to us by corporate and needed to follow their specs.

If you were provided the specs/images for the VMs then I suspect the reason for the separate /var file system is a holdover from the old days when drives were small and as /var grew in size there was a risk of causing the system to crash as it ran out of space. Back then /var was on a separate file system so it could not cause the root file system to fill up and crash the entire system. The space required by /var does grow as it holds /var/spool and /var/log as well as /var/tmp, /var/www, /var/cache, etc. All those are dynamic in space needs.

Today with larger drives and more space it is no longer as strict a necessity to have the separate file systems, but the practice is still held to by a lot of admins. LVM is definitely your friend in that case.

Well done folks - excellent work computersavvy.