It is seeing the 4 TB disks as 1.8 TB each? Sounds like the well-known 2TB limitation related to MBR partition tables and 512-byte sectors. Does VMWare support 4096-byte sector format disks? Does VMWare support GPT partition tables? Perhaps this may help:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2058287 On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 12:57:40PM -0500, Scott Ehrlich wrote: > A server reboot and a closer look via vCenter client shows the machine > shipped with 5.5 U2. > > It also does show what appears to be our four x 4 TB drives - they do > show in the machine's BIOS. > > But, under vCenter client, when seeing the available disks to use, it > lists the 4 x 4 TB disks at 1.8 TB each. > > Again, they are NOT in a RAID, but individual SAS, and directly > attached. There is another storage device with ESXi on it. > > The server does have a PERC, but it does not acknowledge any disks, > indicating the four disks are truly independent. > > Having the latest ESXi version, what is the next step to having the > system actually see each 4 TB drive at or near the raw capacity (i.e. > 3.6 TB)? > > This page - https://communities.vmware.com/thread/467221 - has been > very helpful. > > Thanks. > > Scott > > On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> From: Discuss [mailto:[email protected]] On > >> Behalf Of Scott Ehrlich > >> > >> I am new to VMWare Datastores. Previous positions have already had a > >> vCenter system built and enterprise-storage ready. > >> > >> We just installed a new Dell R520 PowerEdge server with 4 x 4 TB SAS > >> drives, vCenter 5.5.0 preinstalled, and a 2 TB boot disk. > >> > >> Do we need to create a PERC RAID set with the 4 TB disks for vCenter > >> to see that volume as a Datastore? > >> > >> I've been googling to see what is fundamentally needed for disks to be > >> visible in vCenter for a Datastore to be created. > > > > Oh dear. You're not going to like this answer. > > > > First of all, if you're installing on a Dell, you should ensure you've > > checked Dell's site to see if you need the Dell customized installation > > image. > > Go to http://support.dell.com > > Enter your service tag > > Go to Drivers & Downloads > > For OS, select VMWare ESXi 5.1 (or whatever is latest) > > If you see "Enterprise Solutions" with "ESXi Recovery Image" > > under it, you need to use that custom ISO. > > Otherwise, go to vmware.com and download the standard VMWare ESXi > > ISO > > > > Before you begin, you probably want to configure your PERC as one big raid > > set. Vmware doesn't have support for storage changes, soft raid, changes > > to hard raid, snapshots, or backups. It can handle raw disks, iscsi, nfs, > > and not much else. It also doesn't support backups unless you pay for some > > thing (not sure what, and not sure how much.) With a Dell server > > specifically, you can contact Dell about how to install OMSA, which will > > give you an interface you can use to control your PERC configuration > > without needing to reboot the system, but the extent of usefulness will be > > limited to basically replacing failed disks without the need for rebooting. > > Just make sure you don't upgrade vmware after you've installed OMSA (or > > else you have to reinstall OMSA). > > > > By far, far, far, the best thing to do is to run vmware on a system that is > > either diskless or has a minimal amount of disk that you don't care about, > > just for vmware. My preference is to let the vmware be diskless, and let > > the storage system handle all the storage, including the vmware boot disk. > > (Generally speaking, it's easy to boot from iscsi nowadays, so there's no > > need to muck around with pxe or anything annoying.) Let the guest machine > > storage reside on something like a ZFS or other storage device that's meant > > to handle storage well, including snapshots & backups. Solves *all* the > > problems. Using simple dumb 10G ether works well and inexpensively as long > > as you get sufficient performance out of it (it performs equivalently to > > approx 6 or 9 disks). Anything higher performance will need infiniband, > > fiber channel, or similar. > > > > By far, my favorite setup is a ZFS server for storage, and a diskless ESX > > server to do work. > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
