esxi not seeing any volumns from my raid controller

[dirtdevil01]

I just built a server using a supermicro motherboard (MBD-X8DAH+-O) and the supermicro 2U chassis (CSE-825TQ-R700LPB).

I installed an adaptec 2244100-R controller...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103098

And 8 western digital hds...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

I had some problems with my original 10TB raid 5 volume. I wiped the raid, created a few small raid 1 volumes and rebooted. Now, when I go to create a datastore, it doesn't see any of the volumes I created. Even after I rescan/refreshed the adapters and all that standard stuff, it doesn't see the volumes I created. What gives? I attached some screen shots.

[DSTAVERT]

I don't see the Adaptec 2244100-R RAID controller in the Hardware Compatibility List so it is quite likely that the controller is not recognized by ESXi.

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Edit:

The Adaptec 2244100-R is actually the Adaptec 5805 controller which is on the list. Check to see that you have current firmware for the card.

[DSTAVERT]

I assume you created volumes smaller than 2TB -512bytes. You may need to wait for the array to initialize.

[dirtdevil01]

Yeah, I checked and the bios version on the card was 1 rev behind so I'm going to patch it. But another thing happend. To test that the problem was the card, I connected 3 of the 8 drives directly to the motherboard and I can see them just fine in esxi. I can create datastores (which create faster now) BUT, I can't delete a datastore that already had written data on it. I created a vm and put it's vmdk on a datastore and then removed the datastore "delete from disk option". I checked and it's not in the datastore anymore and I manually erased all the other files in that data store. But when I tried to delete the data store I get an error message (attached a screenshot).

[dirtdevil01]

Yeah, the datastore was only 500GB. But another thing thats weird is when I create this 500GB data store on a 2TB drive, when I go back and try to create another data store on the drive, that drive is no longer available to put another datastore on. I thought you could put multiple datastores on the same drive in esxi?

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

I don't know what the controller is capable of. Some controllers have the capability to create smaller chunks out of an array. Those chunks (my term) can be called different things depending on the manufacturer. It could be something like "virtual disk". You may need to use an adaptec utility disk to do this. Create the array with all your disks and then create the virtual disks after the fact with the utility. The Adaptec docs are the place to start.

[dirtdevil01]

I'm talking about in general. If I have a plain old 2TB sata drive connected to a motherboard and I make a 500GB datastore on it. Shouldn't esxi still allow me to create more datastores out of the remaining 1.5TB?

And as for the error message screenshot I sent, that was from a datastore stored on a drive connected directly to the mb, not the adaptec card. I heard there was a way to force esxi to remove a datastore locally from the console with a few commands but I can't find any of the posts that show that. Also, why does that keep happening? I'm not just talking about me. I've noticed a bunch of people having that problem, where they can't delete unused datastores.