How can I add disks to my datastore?

[Andrew710]

I have recently installed Hypervisor, but when I look at the Datastores and Devices section of the Configuration tab in vSphere client i only see 2 datastore with 1 of my disks added.

Under Devices I can see all disks listed, so i have tried to Add Storage to the Datastores. Running through the wizard i can see the disks, but when i select one and chose next i get an error stack "Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "x.x.x.x" failed

My server is not in the HCL, but it does pass the hardware test.It uses an ICH10 SATA Controller, that can be configured as a RAID controller. I have tried changing the settings in the BIOS for basic IDE, or RAID, but VMware can only see the first disk (they are all on the same controller).

Is the issue due to the RAID? I.E. the Hypervisor can install onto a non RAID environment, but in order to create virtual machines, a supported RAID controller will be required? I have seen other comments in the forum suggesting that non RAID should work, but not recommended due to performance issues. For our organisation and the use of this server, performance is not going to be critical as it will be used as a dev server so we are happy to lose a bit of performance.

Can anyone advise if you have seen this issue, and how you resolved it? The Disks are 4 x 2TB WDC SATA disks

Thanks

Andrew

[4nd7]

Hello,

Please check this article: http://www.eversity.nl/blog/?p=93

[DSTAVERT]

If there is any pre-existing data on the disks ESXi will not use them. Most built in RAID controllers are unsupported since they require a software component to perform RAID calculations. You will only be able to use your disks as individual disks unless you were to replace the on board controller with a supported hardware RAID controller on the HCL http://vmware.com/go/hcl  I would start again and choose whatever BIOS setting that will disable any on board RAID. Use a LINUX rescue disk and delete any existing partitions then try adding the disks as datastores again.

[Andrew710]

This sounds as though this is my issue, as the system came with Windows installed and no doubt the other disks had partition information. I am a Linux virgin, so where and how do a create a boot disk to be able to re format or fdisk the remaining drives? Are these types of commands available through the vSphere CLI?

Thanks

[4nd7]

Disable the raid and then you can use fdisk from the ESXi console to erase the partitions.

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

You mentioned that you had two disks showing as datastores? If you have already installed and configured ESXi and created Virtual machines I would remove the disks and use another machine to fix the disks. There are many linux rescue disks and almost any net install disk for a standard linux distribution should work as well. It is possible to use the Tech Support console in ESXi to do it as well but you do risk loosing your current install.

[Andrew710]

Thanks for this. I have created a Linux Rexcue disk and removed the unrecognised partition space on the 3 offending disks. Now I can run through the wizard to create new Datastores, setting the block size etc, but i still get the same error when i click finish.

Any further ideas?

[DSTAVERT]

When you remove partition information make sure that you write the changes back to the disks.

I have run into this on occasion. The solution is to zero out the first parts of the disk. You can use something like

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd BS=512 count=50 (replace sdd with the drive you are wanting to zero out sda sdb sdc etc. )

[Andrew710]

Fantastic. Thanks.

One note for anyone else following this thread. I had to change the 'BS' to lower case to work.

Cheers

Andrew