So after about 9 friggin hrs of screwing around with the bug in 5.5 that simply will NOT allow one to delete the auto-created VMFS5 local datastore and simply create a new VMFS3 legacy datastore. This results in the well known, dreaded GUI errors. Fine.
Fast forward. Rebuild my entire 5.5 host wiping drive clean and start over.
Yes, I have seen the 100% totally incorrect outdated article at https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=10098... titled
Manually creating a VMFS volume using vmkfstools -C (1009829).
Doesn't work, period. Half the commands are fdisk and don't even apply to GPT, the other half produce read-only filesystem and other various errors because coredump partions exist and numerous other totally UNDOCUMENTED reasons why it won't work. Also the commands are not even updated for GPT partitions in these outdated articles. I am truly not the only one I see many posts by people wiping entire partition tables because the darn tools are broken and some asking the same thing I'm asking - is it friggin possible to perform such a trivial task without some 3rd party writing it for vmware?
Here's what I want - in a vsphere 6 world I want a darn VMFS3 datastore. That's it. I"ll rub two sticks together, I'll build one on USB if needed. I get the benefits of the non-legacy vmotion mover with VMFS5, and yes, I still have an absolute need to maintain a legacy VMFS3 datastore and this simply should NOT be this daunting of a task with handfuls of KB articles, even when combined not producing the dozen or so steps.
So, how can a new VMFS3 datastore on local disk be accomplished? I have every version of ESXi on bootable USB and if going back even further than 5.5 is needed then someone please confirm it is a version issue - I do wonder now if I should have just built a 5.0 host and 5.5 is just too broken to get it to work. 5.5 does allow a VMFS3 creation despite a totally broken GUI, so that is the version I am trying to use but again - it simply seems impossible and boy when the same create function works 100% of the time simply checking that radio button for VMFS5 instead of VMFS3 in the GUI, that has to be some of the worst support I have seen given the sheer number of 5.5 patches we are up to still without that being fixed. Then, you wind up with the other bug where you get the other 5.5 error and are totally dead in the water if ANY partitions exist on the darmn disk so then you're left wiping entire disks as the only solution. Really? To create a single partition in free space and format VMFS3?
I really have spent FAR too much time on this still without a solution, so I really do need a guru to walk me through the handful of commands, in order, that they think will actually work on ESXi 5.5 to manually delete the default local datastore and replace it with a VMFS3 one and if it works I will gladly video record the procedure to assist others who also seem to have this solution elude them.
