Data store sizing issue

[WeaZel]

Here is what may appear as a simple question for you all.

I have 2 Dell 2900 servers with 8 drives each. I set them up as raid 5 with a total drive capacity of 4.77TB of storage.

I install ESX Server 3i,3.5.0, 110271

I then try to create a data store. it says that there is 4.77TB Capcity, but only 790.14GB available. What the heck?

How can I get access to the rest of my drive space?

[eldee201110141]

Your space is there, but ESX has an issue seeing space above 2TB. You'll need to partition the drives to be smaller than 2tb to use all the space.

[WeaZel]

GREEEEAAAAT

so now rather than loosing 1 750GB hdd, I get to loose 2 of them.

wonderful

[eldee201110141]

No you don't have to do it that way. You can still create 1 big raid 5, but partition to smaller than 2TB per LUN. The onboard RAID should stil allow you to do that.

[happyhammer]

i wouldnt bet on it with a Dell, with HP you can definately slice up the raid set,

[Texiwill]

Hello,

You can carve up a single large locally attached storage LUN into multiple partitions. That is a part of the Service Console and not the raid controller. However, NOTE the use of more than 1 partition for a remote storage LUN is a very very bad idea due to LUN locking considerations.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[WeaZel]

it is not remote storage.

the 8 750GB HDDs are in the machine.

[bobross]

You should create multiple LUNs of < 2 TB on your hard disks. Then, create datastores of whatever size you like (up to 2TB) using those LUNs.

[WeaZel]

ok, here is what I have done.

one large array, with 3 virtual Disks, or LUNs.

1 set to about 810GB

2 set to 2097GB

I installed the OS on the first LUN and will use the other 2 for datastores. I sure do hope that VM fixes this "limitation" in the future.

[bobross · Accepted solution]

The 2 TB limit has nothing to do with VM or any other OS...it has to do with SCSI and the way it specifies blocksize and LBA (logical block address). The current method gives a max LUN size of 2 TB. There is a new SCSI spec coming out that will allow the creation of very large LUNs by allowing a variable block size, i.e. other than 512 bytes. But that is easier said than done...every SCSI initiator and target will have to interoperate using the new standard to achieve success. It will take a while.