Disk issue with ESXi

[ArizonaGeek]

I have a Dell PE2950 with six 300 gig local drives with the free ESXi version loaded for 1.3 tb of space.

I added a 6tb Dell MD1000 drive array to the server and initialized the drives. When I try to add the drive to ESXi, under config, I click on Storage then "Add storage" then Disk/LUN, I show the Capacity of the drive as 6.36 TB of space but only 369.49 is available. I can't for the life of me figure out how to get more than 369 gigs of space. I was thinking that maybe ESXi wouldn't want more than 2tb of space but I would think it would at least read that or allow me to carve it up in 2tb chunks but it doesn't. Anyone have any ideas on how to get ESXi to read the entire 6tb amount of space?

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[Arisap]

How are you presenting the LUN's to the ESX host? Did you create one enourmous 6TB LUN and present that?

 

[ArizonaGeek]

This isn't a san, the drive array is a SAS attached DAS.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

ESX and ESXi have a 2 TB LUN limit and depending on the block limit you set will determine the size of VM servers you can create as well. I would also verify the drivers, if any, your ESXi server needs to correctly represent the 6tb Dell MD1000

http://support.dell.com/support/edo...dditionalDocs/cnfigrtnguide/storage_guide.pdf

 

[ArizonaGeek]

I got it to work by carving up the disks in the RAID card bios. With Dells PERC 5/e they didnt make it very intuitive to create different volumes.

I a couple of 1.99 TB volumes and made a couple of smaller ones. Worked perfect when I did that. Guess ESX cant see over the 1.99 TB limit to even slice it up.

Thanks for the suggestions though!

Cheers,
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!