Add disks to vSAN cluster - General vSAN error

[mikeweeks_poloc]

Hello community!

I am attempting to build a test vsan cluster using some decommissioned HP DL360p Gen8 servers.  As the title suggests, I've run into a bit of a roadblock and I am at a loss at this point. 

Configuration:

(3) node DL360p Gen8 servers consisting of:

     - P420i controller in HBA mode

     - (2) 600GB SAS HDDs

     - (2) 500GB SATA SSDs

ESXi 6.7 Enterprise Plus and vCenter standard, as well as vSAN Enterprise licenses.

All three hosts are connected to an iSCSI LUN so that vCenter appliance has somewhere to live. 

All HDDs and SSDs are visible to the hosts as HDDs and SSDs, respectively.  All partitions have been cleared on the 12 drives. 

The yellow items are related to performance service which is not running - I assume a viable vsan datastore is required for that to actually run. 

Attempting to claim disks:

I get this:

I can't seem to find any other clues to go on other than the frustratingly vague error.  With any luck, someone else has gone through this and may be able to shine some light for me! 

Cheers-

Mike

[TheBobkin]

Hello Mike,

Welcome to Communities.

I think you should consider validating that you can enable vSAN and create Disk-Groups without Quickstart just to rule out other factors - if you can then the issue is with Quickstart.

What exact build/release version (e.g. ESXi 6.7 U2/13006603) are your hosts and vCenter running?

Can you check the cluster/host task & events for failed tasks and potentially more useful information as to cause?

Bob

[mikeweeks_poloc]

Thanks for your reply TheBobkin​,

I used your suggestion and completely got rid of the old cluster, started a new cluster but did not use Quickstart.  Unfortunately still seeing the same errors. 

An additional error that I didn't mention before, shows when I try to create a disk group on an individual host.

The disk it is referring to is an SSD.  I've tried it with either SSD.  I did notice it only lets you use 1 of the 2 SSDs when creating a disk group, however if you use "claim unused disks" it appears to let you select all of the disks. 

I am actually now using 6.7.0 U3, 14320388 on the hosts.  Vcenter is also on the latest build, 14368073.

Beyond this info, there really aren't any other cluster/host tasks & events that divulge any usable information here. 

Mike

[TheBobkin]

Hello Mike,

I would advise approaching it from lowest level just to rule out vC/cert issues etc. - not saying this is how you should have to configure it but for troubleshooting purposes:

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

You could also check if it just not allowing creation of one type of Disk-Group e.g. temporarily manually try making a Disk-Group with 1 SSD as cache and another as capacity (As opposed to SSD for cache and HDD as capacity).

Bob

[mikeweeks_poloc]

Hello Bob,

Thanks again for throwing out some ideas here. 

I SSH'd into one of the hosts and ran the command you mentioned:

Seems to be the same error that the GUI received when I tried to create a disk group from my last post.  A rather vague error as well. 

I've even gone through and erased partitions on the disks (even though it didn't show any to begin with) just to be sure. 

One thing that I am curious about is on the Storage Devices GUI, the SSDs say SAS under the transport column.  However they are just consumer grade SATA SSDs (Samsung 860 I think) for testing purposes.  Perhaps this is just because all of the drives are behind the P420i array controller, although in HBA mode I figured everything is in pass-through mode regardless.

Any other ideas as to what would prevent a disk from being reserved? 

[TheBobkin]

Hello Mike,

While these are indeed consumer-grade devices that are no supported for vSAN, this itself shouldn't prevent claiming them.

Actually that controller only supports RAID0 mode and I have seen one similar claim issue when disks are presented in a mode the controller doesn't support:

VMware Compatibility Guide - I/O Device Search

Can you please proceed with configuring all attached devices with individual RAID0 VDs and attempting configuring this? (Try it on one host at first to confirm whether this is the issue so as to save time).

Bob