Confiuring Block Size

[VMwareman85]

No San - all internal HDD's

Seems like I need VM's that are over 256 Gig's, so I need to change the block size.

I have a Hp DL 380 with 6 internal HDD's, in one large Raid 5 container. I'm trying to install ESX 3 on the server. I went by the user guide to configure the VMFS container.

Here are all the steps I performed:

1. Custom Installation

2. During the install process, I identify the: /boot, /, SWAP, /tmp, /var, and vmkcore; I did not identify the VMFS volume. There is about 1.8 TB of free space.

3. I SSH into the server and run the vmkfstools utility for create the VMFS volume with 2MB Block size switch, but it continuously errors out on me.

4. I then tried to go through the VI client, I see the available space, I provide it the name and at the final step when I'm ready to create the partition I get an error of "A specified parameter was not correct"

5. I only have one container, due to HDD space requirements.

[esiebert7625]

Make sure the user you are using has read-write access to the vmfs volume.

Here's some technotes with a similar error:

http://kb.vmware.com/KanisaPlatform/Publishing/885/218402_f.SAL_Public.html

http://kb.vmware.com/vmtnkb/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2173&sliceId=SAL_Public

[VMwareman85]

I'm using the root user, so permissions should not be an issue.

I'm getting this error after seeing the available local storage, and trying to configure it with a 2mb block size.

[mmccown]

FYI I've gotten this to work by doing the following:

Typical graphical install, used the partitioning wizard and edited the defaults making sure the large VMFS3 partition stays out of the extended area (IE; stays in /)

I then ran 'fdisk /vmfs/devices/disks/vhhba1:0:0:0' to display the partition table and verify my HBA name (vmhba1:0:0:0), and get the partition number for my big VMFS partition (vmhba1:0:0:0p2 in my case).

Then to format for 2M block size I ran

'vmkfstools -C vmfs3 -b 2m -S ESXLocal /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:0:0:2'

'-S' named it 'ESXLocal', of course you'd use what name you want

I used 'vmhba1:0:0:2' because thats' the way vmkfstools sees the partition, as opposed to vmhba1:0:0:0p2 as listed in fdisk.

Now in Virtual Center, the block size for that partition shows 2MB.

Hope this helps!