18TB Storage vmware issue

[ranjitcool]

Hey Guys,

We built a intel storage server with 18tb disks that are in raid 5.

We installed vmware on it but vmware only lets us access 150gb of the disk space.

It does see 18TB capacity but we cannot expand it nor access it.

We tried changing the block size from 512 to 2 MB which increased the 150gb to 2 tb.

How do we access the entire 18tb space?

Thanks

RJ

[znet98]

vmware only support up to 2TB, this happened before to me, and i think the new product still has same role

Check kb.vmware.com

[Troy_Clavell]

you will have to make your RAID sets smaller, as the maximum LUN size is 2TB minus 512bytes

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_config_max.pdf

[ranjitcool]

Hey Troy,

Yes we have 2 TB drives, 12 X 2TB=24 TB

We have raid 5 applied to it with two hot spares, giving us about 18TB of space.

what should the format be if i carve smaller raid group, i wud be wasting too much disk on parity drives itselves.

RJ

[golddiggie]

The LUN's that you intend to have VM's on need to be no larger than the 2TB-512B size limitation...

Depending on what you're doing/making for VM's, you could use one LUN (under the size limit, 8MB block size to get the max per VM) and then carve up the remaining space into whatever sizes you need and present them to the VM's using them as iSCSI targets. Such as you have two VM's that are file servers, you need 5TB per server to share out for user groups X and Y. You make the LUN for the VM's, which holds the VM's C drive (and other necessary files/items) and then make the 5TB LUN's on the SAN that you then use the iSCSI initiator of the VM (easily done under Windows Server 2008, not too bad under 2003 either) to connect that iSCSI volume as a drive, which you then share out as you would have a regular (physical) volume/drive.

Depending on what you're using for a SAN, this could be either easy, or not... On the SAN's I've used, carving up different sized LUN's has been easy, so that they could be presented properly (as well as sized correctly)...

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[ranjitcool]

Knock knock, we are not using any san.

Imagine a dell 2950 server with 18tb of disk in it.

There are no luns in this issue.

We want to use 18tb disk as a datastore thats it.

No luns no iscsi's.

RJ

[amvmware]

As has already been explained you cannot present an 18Tb lun to vSphere to create a datastore. You can create 2Tb and then use extends of 2Gb each to use the 18Tb.

The following article explains the use of extents

http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2010/04/26/vmfs-volume-extents-decisions.aspx

Why do you need an 18Tb datastore.

[mcowger]

With local storage you still have LUNs

If you are using a PERC RAID controller, go into its settings and you'll find that you can split up your array into multiple smaller chunks (Dell often calls them VDs or Virtual Disks). This is what you need. You need to expose multiple VDs less than 2TB each.

You can't use anything larger than 2TB as a datastore.

--Matt
VCP, VCDX #52, Unix Geek, Storage Nerd

[golddiggie]

I'd say that over 98% of the people who have large amounts of storage (a couple of TB) that they're looking to use with ESX/ESXi, do so via a SAN/NAS device/array... Having 18TB (usable, more actual) as direct attach presents you with MORE issues, as you are finding out. Basically, it's NOT a smart/recommended thing to do.

The LUNs ARE at least part of the issue... If you want to use all 18TB as a single datastore, you're not going to do it as you want/think... You'll need to break it up into 2TB-512B segments (via the PERC controller as already mentioned) and present it that way (to ESX/ESXi)...

Now, had you bothered to read the documentation on the ESX/ESXi products BEFORE you went and started setting up this server/host you would have seen how you're setting yourself up for issues/trouble. It's right in the configuration maximums pdf about the datastore size limitation... Couldn't be any more clear.

IF you really do 'need' to have a single 18TB LUN/datastore then you're pretty much SOL when using it as a DAS... That is, without going into the array, making logical drives/volumes that are under the limit, then using the storage management aspect of ESX/ESXi to combine those LUNs into a single datastore... I've never done that (always had a SAN in production environments, or had under 2TB-512B of DAS on a host) so you're going to have to go through it yourself (or RTFM)...

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[jcwuerfl]

Hey all, would he be able to make say 9-2tb luns and glue them all into 1 datastore with extents since its all local storage anyway?