creating thick 2TB VMDK

[knuter]

Hello,

I'm trying to create a 2TB VMDK file for a VM on a ESXi 5.0 Update 1 (build 623860).

I know the max size is 2TB minus 512 bytes, but I thought it would be possible to select 2TB as the size and vSphere would remove the 512 bytes itself since it accepts the size. Higher than 2TB and you get an error and it adjusts itself to 2TB, like this:

But even though it creates the file without error, something fishy is going on... The first file were created at 2TB, the second at 2047GB, both thick.

As you can see the first one appears to be thin, but I've tried both lazy zeroed and eager zeroed with the same result.

The 2TB disk appers to be working fine, but vCenter adds an additional 2TB as uncommitted space, which cause a datastore overcommitted warning to go off, and I don't like warnings in my enviroment.

Any ideas to why this is happening at the 2TB mark?

[sparrowangelste]

Like you said, you expected the vsphere wizard removes the 512 bytes, by going to the nearest acceptable value. So the error message in you picture would be normal.

[a_p_]

To me this looks like a bug in the Hypervisor, it shouldn't create a file with that size at all. Anyway, remember that in case you want/need to create snapshots for this VM, the maximum virtual disk size is ~2,032GB, because the snapshot file has some metadata which also requires space in the delta file.

André

[knuter]

Snapshots are not needed for these disks, I'm going to create them as Independent when I'm done testing. Their usage will be to store backupdata, kinda like virtual tape drives. Though thanks for saying.

sparrow: Yes, I know, but I wanted to point out that even though the message says nearest acceptable value it still kinda bugs out, as seen in the second picture.

Updated to build 768111, but still the same bug when I created a new 2TB VMDK. Guess I'll just go for 2000GB insted of 2048GB then.