Hi. We are using ESX 4.0 on a x3850-M2. Have some internal disc (400 GB), one external DS3400 (500 GB), then a DS3000 extension (800 GB) and another new DS3400 (3 times 1,64 TB).
The x3850 has a Brocade fibre channel to a SAN-24 switch where all the DS3400 and V3700 meet.
Now we buy another V3700 storage (8 TB), and connect it to the SAN-24 (configured properly)
ESX sees the Fibre Channel Device, detects OK that it has a capacity of 8 TB ... but allows me to create only a 185 GB volume.
I have found that VMFS has a 2 TB limit, and we shall use "extensions" to it, but ... where does the 185 GB limit come from ?
Please, have a look at the attached PNG file where a nice print screen displays all the details ...
Thanks for any idea. Sebastian.
Yes you will have to split the 36 TB into 2 TB LUNs - but remember the - 512B so slightly smaller than the 2 TB -
I am not sure were the 185 GB comes form but I have always seen this how the vmkernel reports a LUN when it is too large - this goes back to the days of ESX 2.x -
The ESX/ESXi 4 limit also applies to the maximum LUN size - they cannot use LUNs larger than 2 TB -512 B and the 185 GB comes from its inability to see the 8 TB -to use the 8 TB you will have to -carve up into 4 LUNs - you will then need to format the first LUN as VMFS and add the remaining 3 as extents - if you want to use an 8 TB LUN as a single data store you will have to upgrade to vSphere
Hi - in fact, the V3700 has 12 discs of 3 TB each.
I have created 3 partitions using RAID-5 all of them, so I end up with 3 partitions of 8,2 TB.
One of those is made available to my ESX.
Do you mean I have to split the 36 TB into 2 TB LUN's or partitions ?
===================================================
We are OK with ESX 4.0 and can not go to vSphere.
Thanks. Sebastian.
in /var/log/vmkernel file I find ...
===
Feb 3 15:45:51 bcnlab003 vmkernel: 111:05:58:45.449 cpu12:4212)
WARNING: ScsiDeviceIO: 1462:
Device 'naa.6005076 30080835d6000000000000000':
Capacity (numBlocks=0x417200000) exceeds maximum supported device size of 2TB - 512 Bytes
===
... which seems OK to me -
Still a question : where does 185 GB comes from ????
another interesting message :
===
# dmesg
[9350545.355336] Vendor: IBM Model: 2145 Rev: 0000
[9350545.355428] Type: Direct-Access
ANSI SCSI revision: 06
[9350545.357290] sdh : very big device. try to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[9350545.357529] SCSI device sdh: 17179869184 512-byte hdwr sectors (8796093 MB)
[9350545.357744] sdh: Write Protect is off
[9350545.357759] sdh: Mode Sense: 97 00 10 08
[9350545.358136] SCSI device sdh: drive cache: write through w/ FUA
[9350545.358461] sdh : very big device. try to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[9350545.358599] SCSI device sdh: 17179869184 512-byte hdwr sectors (8796093 MB) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< this looks like 8 TB to me ........
[9350545.358739] sdh: Write Protect is off
[9350545.358754] sdh: Mode Sense: 97 00 10 08
[9350545.358981] SCSI device sdh: drive cache: write through w/ FUA
[9350545.359006] sdh: unknown partition table
[9350545.359227] sd 5:0:9:0: Attached scsi disk sdh
[9350545.359302] sd 5:0:9:0: Attached scsi generic sg10 type 0
===
Yes you will have to split the 36 TB into 2 TB LUNs - but remember the - 512B so slightly smaller than the 2 TB -
I am not sure were the 185 GB comes form but I have always seen this how the vmkernel reports a LUN when it is too large - this goes back to the days of ESX 2.x -
thank you, mr WeinStein - I have done a 1,98 TB LU and the ESX sees it OK and wants to provide a 1,98 TB disk to my VMs (see attached pic)
Cheers !
do you think it is a ESX v4 limitation and shall be removed/improved in ESX v5 ?
Sebastian
Yes it is an ESXi 4 limitation - if you check in the configuration maximum document (https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r55/vsphere-55-configuration-maximums.pdf) under ESXi Host Storage maximums you will see that ESXi now supports LUNs up to 64 TB in size -
