HP Smartarray P800 - can't add storage with more than 2 TB

[Bleckmann1]

Hi,

today we've added a HP Smartarray P800 to our HP DL380 G5 ESX Server (running on ESX V3.0.2).

The P800 Controller has been detected correctly and i can see him unter Storage Controllers.

Then we've attached a MSA60 (12x SAS Storage Shelf) to the P800. We've configured one big RAID 5 with 11x300 GB (+ one Sparedrive) resulting in a big 3TB logical drive.

But when we tryed to add a new storage, we can't see that logical drive.

Then we've tried to configure 2 RAID with each 6x300 GB (=> 1.5 TB).

We're able to add these logical drives as storage to the esx Server.

But we want to configure one big 3TB Storage than two smaller Storages of 1.5 TB.

We've updated the Firmware of the P800 to the newest Version (firmware is now 4.06 - since 2.08 P800 supports logical drives upto 2 Zeta Bytes), but the behavior hasn't changed.

It seems that the maximum size of a logical drive attached to a P800 that is recognized within esx is about 2TB.

I can't believe that this is a feature of the P800 and ESX Server. I think it is a bug.

Is anybody having the same problem or maybe a solution for our problem?

Any help is appreciated.

Thnx

Nils

[esiebert7625 · Accepted solution]

This doc contains all the storage maximums. You can make VMFS volumes larger then 2TB but you need to use extents to do this. ESX does not support LUN's larger then 2TB, I think your local RAID set is an equivalent to a LUN. So you'll need to create 2 RAID set's )or logical drives) of 1.5TB, create a VMFS volume of 1.5TB and then create an extent to it with the remaining 1.5TB. It's generally considered not a good practice to use extents so you might consider using 2 separate VMFS volumes instead.

Configuration Maximums for VMware Infrastructure 3 - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_config_max.pdf

Extending a VMFS3 data store - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=65156&tstart=0

To use extents or not? - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=81494&tstart=100

Fyi…if you find this post helpful, please award points using the Helpful/Correct buttons.

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[Bleckmann1]

Hi eric,

thanks for your answer. I know the 2TB limit on SAN LUN, but the MSA60 shelf is direct attached to the Smartarray P800 via a SAS cable. So I thought i could add a storage bigger than 2 TB to ESX 3.0.2, because due to Configuration Maximums max Volume Size is up to 64TB.

Maybe I misunderstood that.

But thnx anyway

Bye

Nils

[BUGCHK]

I know the 2TB limit on SAN LUN,

Most SAN equipment has this 2 TB limit due to the SCSI protocol specification being used.

but the MSA60 shelf is direct attached to the Smartarray P800 via a SAS cable.

So I thought i could add a storage bigger than 2 TB to ESX 3.0.2,

Some SmartArray controllers can indeed create logical disks larger than 2TB, but VMware ESX server uses the 'MBR-style' partition table, which cannot describe disks larger than 2TB.

because due to Configuration Maximums max Volume Size is up to 64TB.

This comes from 32 extents * 2TB per extent.

[UK-ESX-User]

For our servers (mixed bag of DL380 G4 & G5) we merely carved up the hard disks into 2 x RAID 5 sets plus one shared OLS between the two of them for the MSA60 disk enclosures.

At least this way we had space available for migrating larger VMDK files over to the smaller datastore if it was needed.

[Bleckmann1]

Thanks guys, the fog of war has vanished a bit )

Thinks are a bit clearer now.

Bye

Nils

[pancur]

Guys, there's no need to create 2 RAID sets (or there's a misunderstanding in terminology)...

Using ACU (you have to use the offline version though), you can create a single array from 12 drives, then create a logical volume (this is where you define RAID level - which is rather different than with other RAID controllers) of 2TB... Create another one using the rest of the available space and then create VMFS extents.

This way, the Smart Array will use all 12 drives in both logical drives, which gives you better performance. If you create 2 separate arrays and an extent, you won't be using the drives that are on the extent until you fill up the first volume...

It's an old thread, I know, but some might still stumble upon it...

Cheers, pancho