VMWare multiple datastores

[darkosap]

I have DELL PowerEdge R740 with 11 (1TB) ssd disks configured in one virtual disk RAID10 (5:5 + 1) with 4,36 TB usable space.

In VMWare ESXi 6.7 I have created one VMFS datastore with capacity of 2.61 TB (on that datastore i have 3 functional VM's) and now i want to create another VMFS datastore with the remaining 1,75 TB free space of the virtual disk and there is a problem. In the create new VMFS datastore wizard in the second step "Select device" message is shown "No devices with free space". 

Note: I don't want to extend the capacity of the existing datastore. I want to create a second datastore.

 

Is it possible to create multiple datastores on one virtual disk?  Or every datastore should have it's own virtual disk?

Thanks

[a_p_]

>>> Is it possible to create multiple datastores on one virtual disk?  Or every datastore should have it's own virtual disk?
VMware supports a single VMFS datastore on a given disk/VD/LUN.
If resizing the existing datasatore is not an option for you, then - assuming that you want to run ESXi in a supported way - your options are basically limited, to splitting the RAID into multiple VDs, which of course requires to backup the existing VMs, and restore them after re-configuring the RAID, and recreating the datatsore(s).

The unsupported option is to create a second VMFS partition (datastore) manually from the command line. However, I can't tell you whether this will cause issues.

André

[Shane_25p]

Yes, You can create another datastore, but you will have to create new Partition

This can be done with partedUtil tool in ESXi

first you need to get the current partition layout

partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/<Disk Name>

Then you will have to create a new partition with VMFS Type

Eg:

partedUtil add "/dev/disks/t10.ATA_____Samsung_SSD_860_EVO_250GB_______________S3YJNF0JC02559E_____" gpt "10 8000000 488000000 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"

# gpt referes to the disk format.

# The number 488397168 is the last sector number of the drive.

# The next free partition number would be 10.

# 7086079 is the last sector number of the last partition.

# To create a partition we use partedUtil add

# 10 is the used partition number.

# 8000000 the first sector of the created partition.

# 488000000 the last sector of the created partition.

# AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 is the partition type for VMware datastores.

# 0 refers to additional attributes like bootable. We dont need them.

After the partition was created we can format it using vmkfstools

Please let me know if you need more details.

---- Shane ----