ESXi Host can't format new SSDs

[danituga7]

Hello together

I have an ESXi cluster consisting of two DL560 G9. I have been able to take 12 SSDs from an HP 3PAR system, which I have now installed in the first disk bay of the respective hosts (6 per host). The SSDs are being recognized, but I cannot format them. When I try to format them with VMFS5/6, I get the following error:

An error occurred during host configuration: . Operation failed, diagnostics report: Unable to create Filesystem, please see VMkernel log for more details: Failed to check device /dev/disks/naa.XXX capable of ATS

I have worked through the instructions in the following articles, but I still get the same error:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1036609
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1014953
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2146451
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1033665
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/83249
https://vmware-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=32173

I also noticed that all new disks in the ESXi host under "Configure\Storage Devices" have LUN 0.

Here are some outputs regarding the disks:

Command:
esxcli storage core device vaai status get
Output:
naa.XXX
VAAI Plugin Name:
ATS Status: unsupported
Clone Status: unsupported
Zero Status: unsupported
Delete Status: supported
Ex Clone Status: unsupported

Command:
esxcli storage core device list
Output:
naa.XXX
Display Name: Local SAMSUNG Disk (naa.XXX)
Has Settable Display Name: true
Size: 1831420
Device Type: Direct-Access
Multipath Plugin: NMP
Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.XXX
Vendor: SAMSUNG
Model: AREA1920S5xnNTRI
Revision: 3P01
SCSI Level: 6
Is Pseudo: false
Status: on
Is RDM Capable: true
Is Local: true
Is Removable: false
Is SSD: true
Is VVOL PE: false
Is Offline: false
Is Perennially Reserved: false
Queue Full Sample Size: 0
Queue Full Threshold: 0
Thin Provisioning Status: yes
Attached Filters:
VAAI Status: unsupported
Other UIDs: vml.XXX
Is Shared Clusterwide: false
Is SAS: true
Is USB: false
Is Boot Device: false
Device Max Queue Depth: 1007
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: true

[kastlr]

Hi,

I would bet that those SSDs did receive a HPE custom Firmware preventing their usage outside of a 3Par array.
Many storage vendors act similar to avoid problems with customers who want to safe money on storage expansions by buying and inserting cheaper consumer or server SSDs.

You need to figure out the original SSD model (should be printed on the SSD) AND hopefully the vendor offers a Firmware tool & version which would allow you to replace the custom (HPE) FW with the vendor FW.

Good luck 

[danituga7]

Hello

I have now been able to solve the problem. I started the server from an Ubuntu Live CD and used the following commands:

Show all disks:
lsblk

I was then able to see the SSDs from the 3PAR as sbb to sbf.

Since the disks from the 3PAR were formatted to 520 bytes blocks by default, I was able to format the disks from 520 bytes to 512 bytes with the following command:
sg_format -v --format --size=512 /dev/sbX

In addition, I have configured each disk individually as RAID 0 on my HP Smart Array P440ar. I was then able to format all SSDs on ESXi.

I used following source to solve my issue: How to reformat 520 byte drives to 512 bytes (usually) - Hardware - Level1Techs Forums

Greetings from Switzerland 😉

[battybishop]

This is a standard way to do this using any distro and GParted to re-format the disks and is well documented on the HPE forums

[DanRobinsonHP]

Perhaps a dumb question, but if you have a P440 and 12 drives, why are you configuring them each as RAID 0?

[danituga7]

After formatting the disks I restarted the servers (without creating a partition table first). After the restart, the disks weren‘t detactable by Ubunut/ESXi. The RAID0 configuration fixed the issue.

[danituga7]

Could you please send me a link, where this issue is documented? Thank you!