Add RDM disk larger than 2TB

[satnort]

Hi,

We have the following hardware :

Two HP DL380 G6 servers with SAS HBA controllers SC08e; both servers have ESXi 5.0 installed.

The SAS adapters are connected to an IBM DS3300 enclosure with two controllers.

The available space is divided into 3 LUNs, two are used as VMFS datastores, but since we need to have more than 2TB available, we need to create a physical RDM to achieve that.

The command we are using to do that is the following

vmkfstools.pl --server esxi1 --username root --password pass -z /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba4:C0:T0:L2 /vmfs/volumes/VMWareDatastore1/servidor1/IBMRAW2.vmdk

it reports the following error :

Unable to create virtual disk with specified parameters.

I've checked and rechecked the name of the RAW device, the location to store the VMDK pointer and the command line options to no avail.

We are using this setup in evaluation mode to be able to use storage vmotion until we finish migrating the existing VMs from an old iSCSI enclosure.

Thank you.

[Lessi001]

Hi,

are you using RDM physical or virtual mode?

Because if you take a look at the vSphere 5 configurations maximums you can see:

VMFS5

Raw Device Mapping size (virtual compatibility) 2TB minus 512 bytes

Raw Device Mapping size (physical compatibility) 64TB

Regards

Andi

[satnort]

Hi,

Yes, I'm using the -z command line switch. The problem is that the error is very generic and as far as I can tell the command line is right.

[AndySimmons]

Out of curiosity, are you using free ESXi? Some vmkfstools options don't work in the free version because of licensing, and I can't say for sure in 5.0, but in 4.1 it would return vague error messages like this one.

From the 4.1 vCLI release notes:

vmkfstools might print misleading error when running against free ESXi. When you run the vmkfstools vCLI against an ESXi host with a free license, some options, e.g. vmkfstools createvirtualdisk, might return a message like the following:
Unable to create virtual disk with specified parameters
The error message should instead indicate that the operation cannot be performed because of licensing issues.

[satnort]

No, i'm still in the 60 days trial period because I need to use storage vmotion, but I understand that all funcionality is available in evaluation mode. I haven't finished moving VMs so I'm not yet ready to install the definitive essentials plus license.

[AndySimmons]

Try it using the vml identifier instead. You can find it with

ls -l /dev/disks | grep 'hba4:C0:T0:L2'

Run the same command to create the RDMP, using the vml identifier instead of "/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba4:C0:T0:L2".

[satnort]

I've tried with both naa and vml, it reports the same error.

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

FYI....

Might help you

vmkfstools might print misleading error when running against free  ESXi. When you run the vmkfstools vCLI against an ESXi  host with a free license, some options, e.g. vmkfstools  createvirtualdisk, might return a message like the  following:
Unable to create virtual disk with specified  parameters
The error message should instead indicate that the  operation cannot be performed because of licensing issues.

[BreathOfIT]

VMFS5

Raw Device Mapping size (virtual compatibility) 2TB minus 512 bytes

Raw Device Mapping size (physical compatibility) 64TB

So can you use physical compatibility on the free fersion of ESXi 5.1?