I have a dell poweredge 2900 with a 12 tb raid 5. I installed esxi ok. however it is seeing the 12 tb but when i try to use it it says only 768 mgs are available. i think the size limit is 2 tb for esx and esxi. i was hoping to have esxi build a datastore on this raid to the 2 tb limit. ideally i wanted several 2tb partitions on this raid. is there any hope here. what is my options to use this server. Im a fairly new on this product and would apreciate some directions on how to make esxi work with this 12 tb raid array.
Thanks mark
ESX/ESXi VMFS datastore LUNs need to be no larger than 2TB-512B in size... You'll want to use the RAID configuration tools (bios level usually) to carve up the storage to be within those parameters.
VMware VCP4
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Create multiple RAID Volume Groups using the PERC RAID controller configuration utility (Ctrl+R at bootup). Size the Volume Groups just under 2TB and you should be fine. Use the first 2TB Volume Group to install vSphere and you should have a significant amount leftover for your first datastore. Each Volume Group will be a RAID group so design around the number of physical disks you have.
ESX/ESXi VMFS datastore LUNs need to be no larger than 2TB-512B in size... You'll want to use the RAID configuration tools (bios level usually) to carve up the storage to be within those parameters.
VMware VCP4
Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.
As written before, ESX has a max size limit.
In any case I suggest to keep your PERC Virtual Disk smaller and maybe create more than one group of disks.
Andre