inaccurate drive capacity

[tektotket]

ESXi 6.0u2

Lenovo P310 30AT000GUS, flashed with latest bios

Seagate ST4000NM0004 4TB SATA drive, flashed with latest firmware 005

ESXi sees this as only a 500GB drive and only allows creation of a datastore size reflecting that.  Linux or Seagate tools run on the same system recognize it as a 4TB drive.  Sectors at beginning of the drive have been zero'd out just to get that out of the way with no change in ESXi.  No difference in selecting AHCI or RAID mode for SATA in the bios.  A Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB drive put on the same sata port is correctly detected by ESXi as 2TB.   Any suggestions?

[root@localhost:~] esxcli storage core device list

t10.ATA_____ST4000NM0004*********_________________________________******

   Display Name: Local ATA Disk (t10.ATA_____ST4000NM0004********_________________________________*******

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 476930

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST4000NM0004********_________________________________*******

   Vendor: ATA

   Model: ST4000NM0004-1FT

   Revision: NN05

   SCSI Level: 5

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: false

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: false

   Is SSD: false

   Is VVOL PE: false

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: unknown

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unsupported

   Other UIDs: vml.01000000002020202020202020202020205a34463039453434535434303030

   Is Shared Clusterwide: false

   Is Local SAS Device: false

   Is SAS: false

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot USB Device: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 31

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32

   Drive Type: unknown

   RAID Level: unknown

   Number of Physical Drives: unknown

   Protection Enabled: false

   PI Activated: false

   PI Type: 0

   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION

   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   DIX Enabled: false

   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false

snippets from esxcfg-info -

	|----Vendor Name.....................................Intel Corporation
	|----Device Name.....................................Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller
	|----Device Class....................................262
	|----Device Class Name...............................SATA controller

	\==+Disk Lun :
	|----Size...............................................500098378752
	|----Block Size.........................................512
	|----Number of Blocks...................................976754646
	\==+Disk Resource Allocations :
	\==+VM Disk Resource :
	|----VM ID........................................34508
	|----Resource Shares..............................1000
	|----Resource Shares String.......................1000
	\==+LUN :
	|----Name............................................t10.ATA_____ST4000NM0004**
	|----External Id.....................................t10.ATA_____ST4000NM0004**
	|----Type............................................Direct-Access
	|----Vendor..........................................ATA
	|----Model...........................................ST4000NM0004-1FT
	|----Revision........................................NN05
	|----Display Name....................................Local ATA Disk (t10.ATA_____ST4000NM0004*

)

Message was edited by: tektotket

Message was edited by: tektotket

[ThompsG]

Hi tektotket and welcome to the community!

I'm suspecting that you have a driver issue which is preventing you from seeing the full size of the attached drive. Can you run the following commands and return the output here:

esxcli storage core adapter list

esxcli system module get --module=<drivername from above>

This needs to be run from the console of the ESXi server.

Thanks and kind regards.

[tektotket]

[root@localhost:~] esxcli storage core adapter list

HBA Name  Driver  Link State  UID           Capabilities  Description

--------  ------  ----------  ------------  ------------  ----------------------------------------------------------------

vmhba0    ahci    link-n/a    sata.vmhba0                 (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller

vmhba33   ahci    link-n/a    sata.vmhba33                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller

vmhba34   ahci    link-n/a    sata.vmhba34                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller

vmhba35   ahci    link-n/a    sata.vmhba35                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller

vmhba36   ahci    link-n/a    sata.vmhba36                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller

vmhba37   ahci    link-n/a    sata.vmhba37                (0000:00:17.0) Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H AHCI Controller

[root@localhost:~] esxcli system module get --module=ahci

   Module: ahci

   Module File: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/ahci

   License: GPL

   Version: Version 3.0-22vmw, Build: 3620759, Interface: 9.2 Built on: Mar  3 2016

   Build Type: release

   Provided Namespaces:

   Required Namespaces: com.vmware.driverAPI@9.2.3.0, com.vmware.libata@9.2.3.0, com.vmware.vmkapi@v2_3_0_0

   Containing VIB: sata-ahci

   VIB Acceptance Level: certified

[tektotket]

we'll have to ship this system with the 2TB drive for now.  I'd still be curious if anyone finds out what the cause of the problem with the 4TB drive might be but will not be able to do any further troubleshooting on it.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

I'm not 100% sure, but this could be related to the drive being a "4KN" model, which is not suported.

from https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2091600

Does current GA version of vSphere and VSAN support 4K Native drives?

No. 4K Native drives are not supported in current GA releases of vSphere and VSAN.

André

[tektotket]

Thanks for the followup.  Looks like this is definitely an unsupported 4Kn drive and we'll move on to other models