VM Windows 2008 R2 have any limitation to mount a 12T or above iscsi LUN?

[zmanho]

Hi all,

May i know ESXI 5.1's VM Windows 2008 R2 have any limitation to mount a 12T or above iscsi LUN?

If no, may i know the max capacity for iscsi LUN?

Also, May i know can i import 12T ova file to the VC?

Thank you.

[schepp]

Hi,

Windows 2008R2 should be able to mount up to 16TB LUNs with GPT. Maybe even more, have not followed the latest Microsoft iSCSI Initiator releases.

The part with the ova is tricky. Basicly you can, but the disks need to be split, as the maximum disk size in vSphere 5.1 is 2TB minus 512 bytes

In vSphere 5.5 the max disk size is 62TB, so this wouldn't be a problem.

Tim

[zmanho]

Thank you Tim,

I did not have enough resources to perform the import ova test.

May i know during the importing the vsphere5.1 will auto split these 12T disk into 2T? And how many drive will present in the windows2008?

Thank you,

[schepp]

No it will not autosplit it. The disk layout is defined in the ova.

How did you create such a big ova?

[zmanho]

sigh~ My client rise out this question....

So the possible solution is create a new windows2008, then mount a new 12T vHardDisk to the windows and transfer the existing file to that vHardDisk?

[schepp]

On vSphere 5.5 yes.

On 5.1 you will need to create 6 vHardDisks with 2 TB each and span a NFTS volume across those disks in windows disk management.

[vfk]

Spanned volumes are messy, losing any one of the vdisk render the entire volume useless, I think going to vsphere 5.5 is better solutions, support for bigger vdisk.

[zmanho]

Thanks tim and vfk.