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virtualg_uk
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vSAN on ESXi hosts within Workstation 15 Pro (SSD cannot be used as capacity tier disk)

I have 3 ESXi 6.7U2 hosts running within Workstation 15 Pro.

For each host, I have a SCSI 10GB disk for cache and 2x NVMe 50GB disks for capacity (also tried SCSI)

The physical disk I am provisioning everything from is an SSD

When I try to claim disks on the vSAN configuration wizard I see all disks can be used for cache but none of them can be used for capacity.

I looked into the disks further and I saw that when running vdq -q on each host, "IsCapacityFlash": "0",

      "Name"     : "t10.NVMe____VMware_Virtual_NVMe_Disk________________VMWare_NVME2D0000____00000001",

      "VSANUUID" : "",

      "State"    : "Eligible for use by VSAN",

      "Reason"   : "None",

      "IsSSD"    : "1",

      "IsCapacityFlash": "0",

      "IsPDL"    : "0",

      "Size(MB)" : "51200",

   "FormatType" : "512e",

I changed it with this command

esxcli vsan storage tag add -d t10.NVMe____VMware_Virtual_NVMe_Disk________________VMWare_NVME2D0000____00000001 -t capacityFlash

It reflects correctly under vdq -q now: "IsCapacityFlash": "1", but the same issue in the UI, in that I can't make it a capacity disk (dropdown for these disks only shows "do not claim" or "cache tier")

There are no partitions on these disks, they are brand new, provisioned from workstation to the ESXi host(s). Also they are showing as SSD in the UI and I can see all disks in the vSAN disk claim wizard, but not getting "capacity tier" as a dropdown option for claiming.

Obviously, this is totally unsupported but looking to see if I can get any guidance on this one from people here.


Graham | User Moderator | https://virtualg.uk
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TheBobkin
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Hello Graham,

As I was saying, if you can do it from the CLI then is very likely a vCenter issue.

Can you confirm the vC is 6.7 U2, valid vSAN license is in vSphere inventory, try from both UI Clients, try a different browser etc. .

Bob

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TheBobkin
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Hello Graham,

I saw very similar issues in customer-environments when vCenter was on 6.7 GA and hosts on 6.7 U1 (unsupported for vSAN but not ESXi), current compatibility matrix also states only 6.7 U2 vCenter is supported for vSAN 6.7 U2 nodes so first thing to check would be that vCenter is on 6.7 U2.

One could also confirm that vCenter/UI is the issue by manually creating a Disk-Group via CLI:

# esxcli vsan storage add -s naa.xxxxxx -d naa.xxxxxxx -d naa.xxxxxxxxxx -d naa.xxxxxxxxxxxx

VMware Knowledge Base

Bob

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virtualg_uk
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Thanks - The command does complete successfully and I've completed it on all disk groups on all hosts and I even added the hosts to the vSAN cluster with

esxcli vsan cluster join

Now I have a vSAN datastore which I can use but the vSphere Client thinks vSAN is turned off (select cluster > Configure: Shows "vSAN is Turned off")

So now I'm unable to configure vSAN from the UI.

This is just a lab so I'm happy to start again and see what's causing this.

Any ideas?


Graham | User Moderator | https://virtualg.uk
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TheBobkin
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Hello Graham,

As I was saying, if you can do it from the CLI then is very likely a vCenter issue.

Can you confirm the vC is 6.7 U2, valid vSAN license is in vSphere inventory, try from both UI Clients, try a different browser etc. .

Bob

virtualg_uk
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Thanks for following up, you were spot on there.

I initiated the upgrade of the VC 6.7U2 but it turns out that it hadn't actually completed!

Got it all sorted once that was done.

Thanks!


Graham | User Moderator | https://virtualg.uk
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