ESXi SCSI 5TB "Failed to get disk partition information"

[potentialgenius]

First off I need to say that I have tried to follow as many guides as I could find to resolve this problem, but nothing has worked.

We have a server with one 130GB disk which ESXi 4.0 is residing on and another 5TB SCSI disk that we would wish to use as a VMFS partitioned drive, with a big VMDK, that our File Server VM can access.

The installation of ESXi went fine, however when we came to add the second disk as another datastore, we got an Error message: "Error during the configuration of the host: Failed to get disk partition information". From then we have tried numerous solution, manually formatting the drive with the command-line vmkfs tools, re-partitioning to ext2 with GParted Live, erasing the partition information with dd, deleting all partitions, all to no avail.

We are posting our problem here as a last resort, I can confirm that vSphere displays the total capacity of the drive but not the partition information. Also there seems to be a discrepancy between the drive capacity that fdisk reports and the capacity esxcfg-scsidevs -l reports.

Here are some command outputs, this is after the partitions have been deleted on the 5TB drive (the one that ends in "67"):

~ # esxcfg-scsidevs -l

mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0

Device Type: CD-ROM

Size: 113 MB

Display Name: Local TSSTcorp CD-ROM (mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0)

Plugin: NMP

Console Device: /vmfs/devices/genscsi/mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0

Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/genscsi/mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0

Vendor: TSSTcorp Model: DVD-ROM TS-L333A Revis: D350

SCSI Level: 5 Is Pseudo: false Status: on

Is RDM Capable: false Is Removable: true

Is Local: true

Other Names:

vml.0005000000766d686261303a303a30

naa.60024e806b43820012bd2a81ee047067

Device Type: Direct-Access

Size: 5720064 MB

Display Name: Local DELL Disk (naa.60024e806b43820012bd2a81ee047067)

Plugin: NMP

Console Device: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60024e806b43820012bd2a81ee047067

Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60024e806b43820012bd2a81ee047067

Vendor: DELL Model: PERC 6/E Adapter Revis: 1.21

SCSI Level: 5 Is Pseudo: false Status: on

Is RDM Capable: false Is Removable: false

Is Local: true

Other Names:

vml.020000000060024e806b43820012bd2a81ee047067504552432036

naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11

Device Type: Direct-Access

Size: 139392 MB

Display Name: Local DELL Disk (naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11)

Plugin: NMP

Console Device: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11

Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11

Vendor: DELL Model: PERC 6/i Revis: 1.22

SCSI Level: 5 Is Pseudo: false Status: on

Is RDM Capable: false Is Removable: false

Is Local: true

Other Names:

vml.020000000060024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11504552432036

~ #

~ # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/disks/naa.60024e806b43820012bd2a81ee047067: 1599.8 GB, 1599875317760 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 194507 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

Disk /dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11: 146.1 GB, 146163105792 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 139392 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p1 5 900 917504 5 Extended

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p2 901 4995 4193280 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p3 4996 139392 137622528 fb VMFS

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p4 * 1 4 4080 4 FAT16 <32M

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p5 5 254 255984 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p6 255 504 255984 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p7 505 614 112624 fc VMKcore

/dev/disks/naa.60024e807468210011e9060a073e0d11p8 615 900 292848 6 FAT16

Partition table entries are not in disk order

~ #

~ # esxcfg-scsidevs -a

vmhba0 ata_piix link-n/a sata.vmhba0 (0:31.2) Intel Corporation 2 port SATA IDE Controller (ICH9)

vmhba1 megaraid_sas link-n/a unknown.vmhba1 (3:0.0) LSI Logic / Symbios Logic PERC 6/i Integrated RAID Controller

vmhba2 megaraid_sas link-n/a unknown.vmhba2 (5:0.0) LSI Logic / Symbios Logic PERC 6/E Adapter RAID Controller

vmhba32 ata_piix link-n/a sata.vmhba32 (0:31.2) Intel Corporation 2 port SATA IDE Controller (ICH9)

~ #

I had heard there were certain problems with using disks bigger than 2TB in ESXi, however I wasn't sure if it was directly relevant to this problem. I am open to using Raw Device Mappings, I think I saw some guides on unsupported methods of adding RDM to a local drive - any advice on the matter would be welcome.

Currently we would like a 5TB datastore and VMDK to attach to one of our VMs. I guess my question is: how do I get the 5TB disk to work in ESXi?

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

ESX(i) can use at most 2 TB - 512 bytes for the LUN size. This is documented in kb 3371739. You will just need to carve that 5 TB disk up into partitions smaller than 2 TB - 512 bytes each.

Good Luck!

[JaySMX]

vmroyale is correct. You can create a datastore larger than 2TB by using VMFS extents to join multiple LUNs into a single large datastore, however you will still be not be able to have an individual VMDK larger than 2TB.

[potentialgenius]

Thank you for the prompt reply.

After trying numerous different solutions we stumbled across a post on the VMware Communities forums that explained how to connect a RAID controller to a VM using VMDirectPath. This method worked - we could see the storage in the VM and formatted it as an NTFS partition - and we will probably go ahead with this method. We are aware of the shortfalls of using this method however for the time being at least it looks like the most workable solution.

Changing the RAID volumes to be less than 2TB each would mean changing our RAID configuration to one that is less optimal.

Any additional comments or information on using large (>2TB) RAID arrays with ESXi would still be helpful.